Director of Engineering, HR Service Delivery

ServiceNow • Santa Clara, CA

6d • $221,200 - $387,100 • Hybrid

About The Position

At ServiceNow, we are building the single, unified intelligent platform that runs the modern enterprise. HR Service Delivery is the engine that transforms employee lifecycle management from manual, distributed overhead into autonomous, AI-driven workflows. We believe the future of HR technology isn't more people managing more systems. It's fewer, smarter people operating smaller teams enabled by generative and agentic intelligence. As the Director of Engineering, HR Service Delivery, you will establish a new operational model for how engineering teams scale their impact through AI and automation. Your mandate is to reduce the organizational footprint required to operate and evolve HRSD while simultaneously expanding what the product can do. You'll prove this model works on a focused scope, then grow into a bench leader for a broader engineering area. This requires both technical depth and strategic clarity. You'll architect end-to-end automation across the engineering process itself, from defect detection through complete pull requests. You'll translate complex AI concepts into scalable, production-ready systems. And you'll build a team culture that balances velocity with engineering rigor, where automation increases quality rather than just speed.

Requirements

• B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a highly quantitative technical field.
• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 4+ years in technical leadership roles (staff engineer, engineering manager, or equivalent).
• Proven track record shipping complex systems in production, with evidence of shipping at least one system where you personally guided the architecture and engineering process.
• Practical experience with at least one strong classical background: distributed systems, machine learning, compilers, systems programming, or large-scale data infrastructure.
• Strong communication skills. You can write clearly, present to executives and technical audiences, and translate between business and engineering languages.

Nice To Haves

• Classical Computer Science Foundation: You have rigorous training in computer science, software engineering, or machine learning. You've built production systems in complex, real-world environments where you learned what it means to operate at scale. You understand algorithms, systems design, and the difference between elegant code and code that works.
• AI and Automation Fluency: You're not just aware of LLMs and AI tooling. You use them in your own workflow, you understand their limitations as well as their potential, and you have conviction about where they genuinely reduce toil versus where they add complexity. You can design systems that use AI to amplify human judgment rather than replace it.
• Design Sensibility and Cross-Functional Leadership: You have conviction about user experience, not just technical implementation. You've worked closely with designers, product managers, and researchers. You understand that good engineering leadership means making space for other disciplines to do their best work. You can argue intelligently about trade-offs between technical elegance and user clarity.
• Honest about Trade-offs: You understand that lean teams executing quickly sometimes ship tech debt. You also understand that some constraints protect quality and stability. You can make thoughtful decisions about which is which, and you're honest with leadership about the consequences either way.

Responsibilities

• Design and execute a comprehensive automation strategy for your engineering organization. This spans defect identification and triage through code review and pull request generation. Evaluate where AI can genuinely reduce work without sacrificing oversight, and where human judgment remains critical.
• Build the infrastructure for AI-assisted development: integrating LLM tooling into your development pipeline, establishing monitoring and validation loops, and creating feedback mechanisms so the team continuously improves the automation itself.
• Measure relentlessly. Track engineering velocity, defect rates, time to resolution, and team satisfaction. Use productivity gains to fund new capabilities and expand into adjacent areas. The goal is reinvestment, not cost extraction.
• Own the HRSD product roadmap and technical architecture. Start with a tightly defined scope and use it to establish product-market fit and team credibility. As you prove the model works, expand into adjacent areas within HR Service Delivery.
• Lead cross-functional partnerships. Work with product management to translate market needs into engineering roadmap priorities. Collaborate with customer success to understand where automation creates the most value for customers.
• Partner deeply with Design. You'll shape how users experience the product. Work with the design team to translate technical capabilities into intuitive workflows, ensure product decisions are grounded in both feasibility and user need, and foster a shared language between engineering and design about trade-offs. Strong design thinking is how lean teams ship products users actually want to use.
• Establish technical standards and cultural norms. Define what good looks like for code quality, testing rigor, and AI system governance. Instill confidence that automation makes the product safer and more reliable, not faster and more brittle.
• Build and lead a team of 8-12 engineers. Hire for potential and rigor; invest in their growth. As you expand, mentor new engineering managers and share the playbook for lean, AI-enabled teams across the broader engineering organization.

Benefits

• Top-market base salary paired with highly aggressive equity packages.
• Comprehensive, world-class medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Flexible hybrid workspace options across our modern engineering hubs in San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Diego.
• health plans, including flexible spending accounts
• a 401(k) Plan with company match
• ESPP
• matching donations
• a flexible time away plan
• family leave programs

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree