Senior Staff AI/Cloud Architect & Tech Leader

ServiceNow; Santa Clara (CA); Hybrid; USD 191,000 - 334,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health plans

401(k) Plan with company match

Equity (when applicable)

Job summary

ServiceNow seeks a Senior Staff Engineer to set the technical vision across AI-native and cloud-native systems, guiding architecture and strategy for high-impact AI initiatives. You will mentor senior engineers, lead platform development, and influence security, observability, and performance at scale.

The role requires deep systems thinking, collaboration with product teams, and a track record of delivering complex AI-enabled platforms. Location in the AMS region with flexible work persona.

Qualifications

• 14+ years of software development experience with a Bachelor's degree; OR 8+ years with a Master's; OR 5+ years with a PhD; OR equivalent work experience.
• Hands-on cloud-native and AI-native systems or equivalent senior-level roles.
• Hands-on experience with LLM/AI systems at scale, including prompt engineering, agent design, retrieval systems, and production AI/ML services
• 3+ years of designing and building applications on platform-as-a-service or SaaS platforms; deep expertise with ServiceNow platform(Preferred) at scale
• Demonstrated expertise in distributed systems design, microservices architecture, and large-scale systems
• Experience leading customer-critical initiatives or providing technical leadership on strategic accounts

Responsibilities

• Define technical vision and strategy for AI-native and cloud-native systems; establish multi-year technology roadmaps and architectural patterns
• Lead the development of core platforms and infrastructure that enable AI-native development at scale (evaluation frameworks, monitoring, security, deployment)
• Drive adoption of emerging AI/ML technologies, frameworks, and best practices; assess new services and tools for organizational fit
• Establish and evolve technical standards, architectural principles, and engineering excellence standards across the organization
• Own the technical roadmap for critical business initiatives involving AI; evaluate feasibility and set timelines
• Champion investment in foundational improvements (refactoring, testing infrastructure, monitoring, security)
• Influence platform-level decisions involving cost, latency, reliability, and model quality
• Stay at the forefront of AI/ML research and translate research into practical applications for the business
• Mentor and develop senior engineers (IC3/IC4) and engineering leaders; support growth into leadership roles
• Lead technical hiring; assess candidates at senior levels and contribute to building a world-class engineering team
• Establish and enforce engineering culture focused on technical excellence, learning, ownership, and collaboration
• Lead by example in code quality, testing discipline, security practices, and responsible AI principles
• Support manager and team leadership development; provide technical guidance to engineering managers
• Conduct architectural and design reviews; provide critical feedback shaping decisions
• Foster knowledge sharing through documentation, talks, open-source contributions
• Create and refine career paths and professional development opportunities for engineers
• Design and architect large, complex systems involving multiple teams, cloud infrastructure, and AI/ML components
• Lead the design of evaluation frameworks, observability systems, and production monitoring for AI-driven features
• Establish security architecture and guardrails at scale
• Design high-performance data platforms and embedding systems
• Evaluate and guide adoption of new cloud services and technologies
• Drive architectural decisions balancing performance, cost, scalability, reliability
• Lead exploration of AI/ML techniques and prototyping

Skills

AI/ML systems

Cloud-native

Leadership

Mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

ServiceNow seeks a Senior Staff Engineer to set the technical vision across AI-native and cloud-native systems, guiding architecture and strategy for high-impact AI initiatives. You will mentor senior engineers, lead platform development, and influence security, observability, and performance at scale.

The role requires deep systems thinking, collaboration with product teams, and a track record of delivering complex AI-enabled platforms. Location in the AMS region with flexible work persona.