Staff Software Engineer

ServiceNow, Inc.; Santa Clara, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

ServiceNow, Inc. seeks a Staff Engineer to independently lead the design, development, and delivery of complex AI-native and cloud-native systems.

The role demands ownership of critical components, setting technical direction, and mentoring peers while collaborating across teams to improve platform capabilities. The ideal candidate balances deep software engineering with hands-on AI/ML integration, cloud architecture, and production systems, driving secure, scalable solutions in a fast-evolving

Qualifications

• Staff engineer independently leads design, development and delivery of AI-native and cloud-native systems.
• Own end-to-end delivery of features; responsible for architecture decisions and production readiness.
• Mentor junior engineers and participate in architectural reviews and design discussions.

Responsibilities

• Lead design/architecture of AI-native systems including LLM integrations and retrieval pipelines.
• Own end-to-end delivery of medium-to-large features from spec to production monitoring.
• Balance latency, cost, scalability, reliability, and model quality in trade-offs.

Skills

AI/ML integration

Cloud architecture

Production systems

Technical leadership

Code reviews

Tools

Python

Kubernetes

Cloud platforms

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.

Job Description

This role is for a staff engineer who independently leads the design, development, and delivery of complex, high-impact AI-native and cloud-native systems. The IC4 engineer takes ownership of critical components or features, sets technical direction within their domain, and serves as a technical resource to peers and junior engineers. They combine deep software engineering fundamentals with hands-on expertise in AI/ML integration, cloud architecture, and production systems. This role requires the ability to balance technical depth with organizational impact, working across teams to solve ambiguous problems and drive platform improvements.

Responsibility Area: Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Lead the design and architecture of complex, production-critical AI-native systems, including LLM integrations, agentic workflows, retrieval pipelines, and inference services
• Own end-to-end delivery of medium-to-large features or systems, including specification, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production monitoring
• Make informed architectural and technical trade-off decisions between latency, cost, scalability, reliability, and model quality
• Establish evaluation frameworks, testing strategies, and production monitoring for AI-driven features; drive adoption of eval-driven development practices
• Design and optimize high-performance data pipelines, embedding systems, and vector stores handling millions of rows and complex retrieval scenarios
• Champion security best practices, including prompt-injection defense, data privacy, PII handling, responsible AI guardrails, and compliance with regulatory requirements
• Participate in architectural reviews across teams and contribute to platform-level technical decisions
• Stay current with emerging AI/ML frameworks, services, and techniques; evaluate and recommend adoption where applicable

Responsibility Area: Mentorship & Technical Influence

• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers (IC2/IC3) through pair programming, design reviews, architecture discussions, and hands-on coaching
• Conduct thorough code reviews, including evaluation of prompts, agent logic, retrieval strategies, and AI/model behavior validation
• Identify technical debt and improvement opportunities; advocate for and lead initiatives to address them
• Share knowledge through documentation, brown-bag sessions, and architectural guidance
• Contribute to hiring and interview processes; provide technical assessment and feedback on engineering candidates
• Model best practices in software craftsmanship, testing discipline, and debugging methodology
• Support onboarding of new team members and ensure knowledge transfer across projects

Responsibility Area: Cross-Functional Collaboration & Communication

• Work closely with product management, domain specialists, and other engineering teams to define requirements and technical specifications
• Translate complex technical concepts and AI trade-offs for non-technical stakeholders (product, leadership, customers)
• Lead root cause analysis for customer-reported issues, including those involving model behavior, hallucinations, retrieval quality, and distributed system complexity
• Participate in design reviews, technical planning sessions, and retrospectives; contribute perspectives on technical feasibility and risk
• Communicate clearly about design decisions, implementation challenges, AI limitations, and production incidents
• Build and maintain relationships with adjacent teams and external partners where applicable
• Proactively identify opportunities to improve development processes, tooling, and team efficiency

Responsibility Area: Customer Support & Product Excellence

• Participate in customer issue triage and root cause analysis for production ServiceNow application issues
• Work closely with customer success and support teams to understand and resolve complex technical issues
• Provide technical guidance to customers on application usage, configuration, and troubleshooting
• Identify patterns in customer issues and drive improvements to prevent recurrence
• Contribute to customer documentation and internal knowledge bases
• Support customer escalations; provide timely resolutions to critical issues affecting customer operations
• Gather customer feedback and communicate product improvement opportunities back to product management

Qualifications

Additional Information

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 [emailprotected] 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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