Director, Software Engineering Management

ServiceNow; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 221,000 - 387,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health plans

401(k) Plan with company match

ESPP

Job summary

ServiceNow is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead AI-native product development for ITSM/ITOM. You will guide large-scale distributed systems, driver architectural decisions, and shape a high-performing engineering culture.

You will mentor senior engineers, align with product and security teams, and define how AI agents and automation power enterprise workflows while ensuring reliability and value realization.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of related engineering experience.
• 5+ years leading and managing engineering teams (including managers or team leads).
• Experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems and enterprise platforms.
• Deep understanding of system design for scale, reliability, observability, and security.
• Experience with AI-powered products, automation platforms, or agentic workflows is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow engineering teams responsible for ITSM/ITOM products, collaborating with product and engineering leaders on AI-native evolution.
• Own technical strategy and delivery for your teams; set architectural direction with a focus on quality and reliability.
• Hire, coach, and develop engineers, tech leads, and managers, building high-performing teams with clear career paths.
• Drive evidence-based decision-making; formulate hypotheses, run experiments, and measure outcomes to guide architecture and product direction.
• Lead evolution toward AI-native capabilities, translating recommendations into staffed, executable work.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across Product, Design, Security, Operations, Sales, and Customer Success to align on roadmap and release readiness.

Skills

Leadership

Distributed systems

AI/ML

Java/Python

People development

Architecture

Job 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.

The engineering organization is a dynamic group of builders, thinkers, and problem-solvers focused on delivering scalable, AI-powered software products that improve how organizations work. We value clean architecture, intuitive experiences, operational excellence, and a culture of continuous improvement. Every engineer playsan important rolein shaping the quality, reliability, and long-term success of our products.

About the Team

The Service Operations Business Unit brings together IT Service Management (ITSM), IT Operations Management (ITOM), and CMDB capabilities on the ServiceNow Platform. This product engineering organization buildsthe softwarethat helps customers deliver resilient, intelligent, and efficient enterprise services.

The Service Operations product portfolio connects incident, request, fulfillment, infrastructure visibility, service mapping, trusted configuration data, automation, and AIOps into a unified operating model. By combining service delivery with operational intelligence and trusted operational context, these products help customers move toward proactive, AI-assisted, and increasingly self-healing operations at enterprise scale.

Together, these capabilities help customers modernize how they deliver andoperateservices, improve reliability, reduce manual effort, and drive measurable productivity outcomes on a single platform.

What you get to do in this role:

As a Director of Engineering, you will lead the teams that architect and build assistive and autonomous AI-native products to usher customers (IT departments using our IT service and operations management applications) into an agentic-first era. The work will span large-scale distributed systems, data ingestion, context creation andutilization, agentic harnesses, cost optimization, and agentic feedback loops to ensure value realization for our customers.

This role requirespeopleleadership, thought leadership, deep technicalexpertise, strong architectural judgment, and a keen understanding of the scientific method to ship and refine real product through iterative experimentation. You will be accountable for the growth, health, and delivery outcomes of yourteams.

Responsibilities include:

• Lead and grow the engineering teams responsible for assigned problem areas within ITSM/ITOM products, working with product and engineering leaders to understand blockers and opportunities around AI-native evolution and value realization.
• Own technical strategy and delivery for yourteams. Set architectural direction, hold the bar on quality and reliability, and stay close enough to the work tovalidatehypotheses through evidence, not theory.
• Hire, coach, and develop engineers, tech leads, and managers. Build inclusive, high-performing teams with clear career paths and durable ownership.
• Drive evidence-based decision-making: formulate hypotheses, run experiments, measure outcomes, and use data to guide architectural decisions and product direction.
• Lead the evolution of current solutions toward AI-native capabilities—identifyingwhere agentic patterns, datautilization, or autonomous workflows can unlock customer value—and translate those recommendations into staffed, executable work.
• Identifyand address value realization gaps in agentic products that exist butaren’tdelivering expected outcomes. Diagnose root causes (architecture, UX, data quality, feedback loops, cost) and direct targeted improvements.
• Establish architecture patterns, engineering standards, and operating rhythms specific to your problem domain. Document tradeoffs, rationale, and implementation guidance to help teams move faster and make consistent decisions.
• Collaborate across ITSM/ITOM engineering teams to share learnings,validateapproaches, and accelerate adoption of patterns that work.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across Product, Design, Security, Operations, Sales, and Customer Success — aligning on roadmap and release readiness, meetingsecurityand compliance requirements, and feeding field and customer signal back into engineering priorities.

To be successful in this role, you have:

• 15+ years of related engineering experience,including 5+ years leading and managing engineering teams (including managersorteam leads), orequivalent practical experience.
• Strong experience building andoperatinglarge-scale distributed systems, enterprise platforms, workflow systems, data-intensive products, integration frameworks, or cloud-scale infrastructure.
• Deep understanding of system design for scale, reliability, observability, fault tolerance, data quality, security, and production readiness.
• Strong technical depth in Java, Python, or similar programming languages.
• Proven ability to define technical direction, influence architecture across teams, and translate ambiguous product strategy into executable engineering plans.
• Demonstrated success hiring, developing, andretainingengineers and engineering leaders, and managing performance, career growth, and team health.
• Ability to lead through formal authority and technical credibility alike, building alignment across peer engineering,Product, Design, Security, Operations, Sales, and Customer Successorganizations.
• Strong judgment in balancing long-term architecture with pragmatic execution, customer impact, engineering velocity, and business priorities.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers, raising engineering standards, and building reusable patterns that create leverage across teams.
• Experience with AI-powered products, automation platforms, AI-assisted workflows, or agentic systems is strongly preferred.
• Ability to reasonaboutAI-assisted enterprise workflows, including data quality, workflow correctness, evaluation, observability, safety controls, and human-in-the-loop review.
• Experience with enterprise service management, IT operations, CMDB, discovery, service mapping, AIOps, observability, workflow automation, endpoint management, or operational intelligence is a strong plus.
• Experience working with large-scale enterprise customers, production systems, and complex migration or modernization efforts is a plus.
• Why Join Us
• Shape the AI-native future of the Service Operations Business Unit product portfolio on the ServiceNow Platform.
• Build and lead the teams delivering foundational product and platform capabilities that help enterprises deliver,operate, automate, and continuously improve services at scale.
• Define how AI agents, automation, operational data, and human workflows come together to create safer, more reliable, and more productive enterprise operations.
• Collaborate with teams that value craftsmanship, quality, innovation, accountability, and meaningful customer impact.

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.

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, national origin, age, disability, gender identity, veteran status, or any other category protected by law. In addition, all qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with legal requirements.

Accommodations

We strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, or are unable to use this online application and need an alternative method to apply, please contact [e-mail] for assistance.

Export Control Regulations

For positions requiring access to controlled technology subject to export control regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR), ServiceNow may be required to obtain export control approval from government authorities for certain individuals. All employment is contingent upon ServiceNow obtaining any export license or other approval that may be required by relevant export control authorities.

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