Senior Machine Learning Engineering Manager

ServiceNow; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 360,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous leave

Learning stipend

Flexible PTO

Competitive retirement

Job summary

ServiceNow is seeking a Senior Manager of Machine Learning Engineering to lead a team building AI search and Retrieval capabilities that power intelligent experiences across the ServiceNow platform.

You will guide engineers and ML practitioners to design and deliver scalable search, ranking, and RAG systems enabling users to discover information and generate insights. Collaboration with PM, Applied AI, Platform, UX, and QA is essential.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with a Bachelor’s degree, or 10+ years with a Master’s degree, or equivalent experience.
• Proven leadership of high-performing technical teams (3+ years).
• Strong background in information retrieval, relevance, ranking, and semantic search.
• Experience with large-scale distributed systems and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience deploying ML models and retrieval services in production.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team building large-scale AI search and retrieval systems across the ServiceNow platform.
• Define strategy, roadmap, and architectural patterns for search, ranking, and RAG capabilities.
• Oversee scalable retrieval pipelines using vector search, semantic search, and LLMs.
• Collaborate with product management, AI, platform, UX, and QA to deliver AI-powered experiences.
• Drive reliability, observability, and performance optimization in production.

Skills

Information retrieval

Java

Python

Engineering management

Vector search / embeddings

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Related field

Master's degree (advantage)

Tools

Lucene

Elasticsearch

Solr

OpenSearch

Algolia

Coveo

Glean

Job description

• We are looking for a Senior Manager of Machine Learning Engineering to lead a team building the next generation of AI Search and Retrieval capabilities that power intelligent experiences across the ServiceNow platform including Conversational and Agentic experiences
• You will lead engineers and machine learning practitioners responsible for designing and delivering highly scalable search, retrieval, ranking, recommendation, and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems that enable users to discover information, generate insights, and accomplish work more effectively
• This leader will collaborate closely with Product Management, Applied AI, Platform Engineering, UX, and Quality Engineering to define strategy, execute roadmap commitments, and deliver AI-powered experiences that serve millions of users globally
• You will play a critical role in advancing the technologies powering ServiceNow AI Search, Knowledge Retrieval, and GenAI experiences, while building a high-performing engineering culture focused on innovation, quality, and business impact
• Lead and grow a team of software engineers and machine learning engineers building large-scale AI Search and retrieval systems
• Drive the strategy, architecture, and execution for Search, Ranking, Relevance, Personalization, and RAG capabilities
• Partner with Product Managers and architects to define and deliver innovative AI-powered experiences
• Build scalable retrieval pipelines leveraging vector search, semantic search, ranking models, and large language models
• Improve relevance, precision, recall, and overall search quality across structured and unstructured enterprise content
• Establish architectural patterns for highly available, resilient, and performant distributed systems
• Lead the development and production deployment of machine learning models and retrieval services at enterprise scale
• Drive operational excellence, reliability, observability, and performance optimization across the platform
• Mentor engineering leaders and individual contributors while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and technical excellence
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to evaluate emerging AI technologies and accelerate their adoption into customer-facing products
• Balance short-term delivery goals with long-term technical investments and platform evolution

Benefits

• Generous family leave
• Matched donations
• Annual learning stipends
• Flexible PTO
• Competitive retirement plan
• Paid volunteer time

• Strong understanding of information retrieval, search relevance, ranking algorithms, and semantic search
• Strong collaboration and communication skills with the ability to influence across engineering and product organizations
• Hands-on experience with Search technologies such as Lucene, Elasticsearch, Solr, OpenSearch, Algolia, Coveo, Glean, or similar platforms
• 12+ years of software engineering experience with a Bachelor’s degree, or 10+ years with a Master’s degree, or equivalent experience
• Strong expertise in Java or Python and large-scale distributed systems
• Experience with modern AI/ML technologies, including LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, and RAG architectures
• Experience deploying and operating machine learning models in production environments
• Knowledge of cloud-native architectures, microservices, observability, and performance optimization
• Experience building and operating large-scale retrieval, ranking, recommendation, or search systems
• 3+ years of engineering management experience leading high-performing technical teams
• Proven track record of delivering innovative products from concept through production at enterprise scale
• Experience with personalization, recommendation systems, or relevance optimization
• Experience building enterprise search, knowledge retrieval, or GenAI products
• Experience leading geographically distributed engineering teams
• Experience working with vector search technologies and embedding frameworks
• Experience integrating AI capabilities into customer-facing SaaS products