Staff Data Platform Engineer - Kubernetes & Distributed Systems

ServiceNow, Inc.; Kirkland (WA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

ServiceNow is seeking a Staff Software Engineer (IC4) to join the Data Platform Engineering team. You will design, build, and operate cloud-native components and services, taking features from design through production, and deliver end-to-end projects.

You will mentor junior engineers, collaborate with senior staff to align with architecture, and contribute to reliability, observability, and on-call readiness while hands-on building.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software development experience with a Bachelor's degree; OR 5+ years with a Master's degree; OR 3+ years with a PhD; OR equivalent work experience.
• 5+ years of hands‑on experience building, deploying and operating workloads on Kubernetes.
• Working experience with at least one major hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP), including its core compute, networking, and IAM primitives.
• Solid working knowledge of containers, CI/CD and GitOps-based delivery, and infrastructure‑as‑code.
• Strong programming skills in Go (or another systems language with a willingness to work primarily in Go).

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate components and services within the cloud-native platform, taking features from design through to production.
• Lead well-scoped projects within your team, turning requirements and rough ideas into solid technical designs and delivering them.
• Collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align your work with the platform’s architecture and standards.
• Contribute to the reliability, scalability, and operability of what you build — writing tests and instrumentation, improving runbooks, and participating in on‑call.
• Spend most of your time hands‑on building — operators, controllers, automation, and platform services that other teams depend on.
• Help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.

Job description

ServiceNow is seeking a Staff Software Engineer (IC4) to join the Data Platform Engineering team. You will design, build, and operate cloud-native components and services, taking features from design through production, and deliver end-to-end projects.

You will mentor junior engineers, collaborate with senior staff to align with architecture, and contribute to reliability, observability, and on-call readiness while hands-on building.