Director, Software Engineering

ServiceNow; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 221,000 - 387,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health plans

401(k) with company match

ESPP

Family leave programs

Flexible time away plan

Job summary

ServiceNow is seeking a Director of Software Engineering for Compute to lead a global, AI-driven compute platform spanning private and public clouds. You will shape scheduling, capacity management, and performance engineering, driving cost efficiency and scalable architectures.

You will mentor managers, own the scheduler roadmap, and apply ML to forecasting and placement optimization, aligning with product, SRE, and FinOps to deliver measurable results.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience with a degree, or 12 with a Master's, or PhD with 8+ years.
• 5+ years of people management in a global 24x7 production environment.
• Experience building or operating large-scale schedulers or resource managers (Kubernetes/Slurm).
• Hands-on ML in production, with models and feature pipelines.
• Strong leadership, communication, and cross-functional skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead the compute engineering org, mentoring managers and engineers.
• Own the roadmap for the compute scheduler, including placement & fairness.
• Define and drive the compute-at-scale model with cost/utilization metrics.
• Lead capacity management across private and public cloud.
• Establish and scale a performance engineering practice with SLOs.
• Apply AI/ML to forecasting, anomaly detection, and placement optimization.
• Collaborate with product, SRE, FinOps to tie capacity decisions to cost/outcomes.
• Drive engineering excellence via architecture reviews and DevOps standards.
• Anticipate risks and mitigate across multi-product platforms.
• Assess availability and scalability; lead optimization efforts.
• Manage resources, staffing, and succession planning.
• Share best practices across teams.
• Define success measures for first 12–18 months.

Skills

Leadership

System design

Kubernetes

Java

Python

Go

CI/CD

ML in production

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Master's degree in a related field

PhD with 8+ years experience or equivalent

Tools

Kubernetes

Slurm

Job description

Company Description

It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for everyone - freeing people from busywork so they could focus on meaningful work. Today, ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our ServiceNow AI platform brings together any AI, any data, and any workflow - helping 85% of the Fortune 500® work smarter, faster, and better. We're building an AI-native culture where technology and talent are unstoppable together. And we're just getting started.

Company Description

It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for everyone - freeing people from busywork so they could focus on meaningful work. Today, ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our ServiceNow AI platform brings together any AI, any data, and any workflow - helping 85% of the Fortune 500® work smarter, faster, and better. We're building an AI-native culture where technology and talent are unstoppable together. And we're just getting started.

Join us to put AI to work for people.

Job Description

Director, Software Engineering Compute will lead the engineering organization that builds and operates our compute platform. You will evolve it into a scalable, efficient, and AI-driven compute model spanning private and public cloud, covering scheduling, capacity management, and performance engineering.

What You Get To Do In This Role

• Lead the compute engineering organization, providing technical leadership, mentoring, and career development for managers and engineers.
• Own the roadmap for the compute scheduler, including placement, bin-packing, prioritization, preemption, and fairness across workloads.
• Define and drive the compute-at-scale model, including unit economics such as cost per workload, utilization, and capacity headroom.
• Lead capacity management for private and public cloud: demand forecasting, reservations, procurement, and cross-cloud placement.
• Establish and scale a performance engineering practice: benchmarking, load and scale testing, regression detection, and SLOs for scheduling latency and throughput.
• Apply AI and ML to demand forecasting, anomaly detection, and placement optimization. Set the AI/ML roadmap and decide where it outperforms heuristics.
• Work with product management, SRE, FinOps, and infrastructure partners to set priorities and tie capacity decisions to cost and customer outcomes.
• Drive engineering excellence through architecture reviews, design standards, and modern software and DevOps practices.
• Anticipate technical and organizational risks that affect multiple products or platforms, and provide clear, structured mitigations.
• Assess availability, scalability, and operational risk across compute systems, and lead the optimization work that follows.
• Manage resources, staffing, and succession planning to build and retain a best-in-class engineering organization.
• Share best practices and engineering standards with other teams across the organization.
• Define success measures for the first 12 to 18 months, such as utilization gains, scheduler latency targets, forecast accuracy, and cost per unit.

Qualifications

To be successful in this role you have:

• Experience in leveraging or critical thinking about how to integrate AI into work processes, decision-making, or problem-solving. This may include using AI-powered tools, automating workflows, analyzing AI-driven insights, or exploring AI's potential impact on the function or industry.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 12 years with a Master's degree; or a PhD with 8 years of experience; or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of people management experience, ideally leading software or systems engineering teams in a global 24x7 production environment.
• Experience building or operating large-scale schedulers or resource managers, such as Kubernetes, Slurm, or internal equivalents.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, system design, and capacity planning at scale.
• Hands-on experience applying ML in production, including models, feature pipelines, or ML platforms. Using AI tools alone is not enough.
• Experience running performance engineering or capacity management across hybrid or multi-cloud estates, including private cloud and public cloud platforms.
• Fluency in multiple programming languages (such as Java, Python, or Go) and strong system design judgment.
• Experience with CI/CD, DevOps, configuration management at scale, and automation tools.
• Deep background in Linux systems architecture and engineering on a global scale.
• Working knowledge of infrastructure components, including hardware platforms, operating systems, virtualization, cloud platforms, and web applications and databases.
• Financial acumen on cloud and infrastructure spend, including cost modeling and FinOps practices.
• Demonstrated experience using AI to improve work processes, decision-making, or problem solving.
• Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions.
• Strong leadership, communication, and cross-functional skills, with a record of building consensus and driving complex projects to completion.

Preferred

• Experience with ML-driven scheduling, forecasting, or capacity optimization.
• Experience with release management and managing large-scale server infrastructure.

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $221,200 - $387,100, plus equity (when applicable), variable/incentive compensation and benefits. Sales positions generally offer a competitive On Target Earnings (OTE) incentive compensation structure. Please note that the base pay shown is a guideline, and individual total compensation will vary based on factors such as qualifications, skill level, competencies, and work location. We also offer health plans, including flexible spending accounts, a 401(k) Plan with company match, ESPP, matching donations, a flexible time away plan and family leave programs. Compensation is based on the geographic location in which the role is located and is subject to change based on work location.

Additional Information

Work Personas

We approach our distributed world of work with flexibility and trust. Work personas (flexible, remote, or required in office) are categories that are assigned to ServiceNow employees depending on the nature of their work and their assigned work location. Learn more here. To determine eligibility for a work persona, ServiceNow may confirm the distance between your primary residence and the closest ServiceNow office using a third-party service.

Equal Opportunity Employer

ServiceNow is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation