Principal Architect

Ecolab • Saint Paul, MN

3d • $166,300 - $249,600

About The Position

As the Principal Platform Architect for ServiceNow, you own the architecture and standards for the platform. This is the most senior technical role on the platform and the resident expert the team, product, and business all go to for the hard calls. You lead to how we design solutions, workflows, and integrations; you make sure we build the right thing the right way, and you bring AI into the platform where it genuinely improves the outcome. This is a people leadership role with direct reports, not an individual contributor position. You will manage, mentor, hire, and grow a team of architects and engineers, and you are accountable for their development and performance. It is also a hands-on role rather than a purely advisory one: alongside leading the team, you set the standards the rest of them build to, review the work that matters, and stay close enough to the platform to make real calls on design, integration, and delivery. Our platform is growing fast, and our solutions are increasingly cross platform. We need an architect who can see past ServiceNow to how it fits into the broader landscape, align the right solution to the business problem rather than forcing everything onto one platform, and bring the discipline of a formal architecture practice to a platform that has grown faster than the standards around it.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field.
• 12 years of software engineering and architecture experience with the ability to personally make and defend design, integration, and delivery decisions.
• Proven people management experience, including directly managing, hiring, and developing architects or senior engineers. This is a leadership role with direct reports, not an individual contributor position.
• Deep hands on ServiceNow architecture, development, and platform governance experience across core modules: Incident, Change, Problem, Request, plus Employee Center Pro.
• Experience owning and enforcing standards across integrations, data, architecture, AI, security, and UX.
• Experience creating enterprise architecture grade documentation and standing up formal architecture governance, including review boards and gates.
• Strong integration and data architecture background. APIs, API design, integration patterns, event driven architecture, and modern software architecture principles.
• 5 years experience of architecting enterprise solutions that span multiple business systems, applications, data sources, and organizational stakeholders.
• Experience designing or delivering AI enabled capabilities in a real enterprise setting, and a practical sense of where AI helps.
• Experience leveraging AI assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar) to accelerate delivery.
• Proven ability to work directly with product and business teams and translate business problems into the right technical solutions.
• Strong communication and facilitation skills with the ability to engage technical teams, business stakeholders, and executive leadership.
• ServiceNow Certified System Administrator (CSA).
• One or more ServiceNow Certified Implementation Specialist (CIS) certifications, or Certified Application Developer (CAD).

Nice To Haves

• ServiceNow Certified Technical Architect (CTA) strongly preferred. CTA maps to the technical depth of this role better than the more advisory Certified Master Architect (CMA), though CMA is a welcome plus.
• Architecture background on other enterprise platforms in addition to ServiceNow. This is a strong preference for us. Our solutions are increasingly cross platform and an architect who only knows ServiceNow will struggle to make the right calls.
• Experience with ServiceNow AI capabilities including Now Assist, Virtual Agent, AI Search, and Predictive Intelligence.
• Experience with ServiceNow industry and workflow applications, specifically APO, MCO, and Source to Pay Operations.
• Experience integrating ServiceNow with ERP systems, or working knowledge of ERP platforms and the processes they drive.
• Knowledge of enterprise architecture frameworks like TOGAF, integration platforms, API management, and workflow orchestration platforms.
• Familiarity with security, privacy, auditability, and risk management requirements associated with regulated business processes.
• Experience influencing platform, vendor, and architecture decisions at enterprise scale.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and standards for the platform across integrations, data, platform architecture, AI, security, and UX. You define the standards in each of these areas and you enforce them.
• Define solution blueprints, reference architectures, reusable design patterns, and technical standards for the platform, and produce enterprise architecture grade documentation to go with them.
• Lead architecture reviews and technical decision making across the ServiceNow platform and the enterprise systems it connects to.
• Drive technology strategy and roadmap recommendations for platform capabilities, workflow automation, and AI enabled operations.
• Stand up and run a formal architecture practice with clearly defined architecture gates that decisions actually go through.
• Chair a formal Technical Review Board and partner with delivery on change and release governance.
• Establish and enforce development standards, quality controls, and platform governance so the platform matures into a stable, well governed state.
• Lead buy versus build assessments, evaluating ServiceNow native capabilities, custom development, and vendors against business requirements, integration complexity, risk, security, scalability, and total cost of ownership.
• Directly manage, mentor, and grow a team of architects and engineers, including hiring, performance management, and career development.
• Build and lead the architecture bench, identify who is ready for more, and give them the runway to grow.
• Raise the level of the teams around you and build a culture where good design is the norm and people want to learn from you.
• Set engineering best practices and lead technical design reviews across everyone building on the platform.
• Work closely with product and business teams. Sit with them, understand the business problem, and align the right solution to it. Sometimes that is ServiceNow, sometimes it is not, and you are honest about which.
• Translate business problems into scalable technical architectures, including application design, workflow orchestration, integration patterns, and data flows.
• Serve as the person product and business come to when they need to know what is possible, what a request really costs, or whether the platform is the right fit at all.
• Bring a clear point of view on where AI genuinely fits on the platform and where it does not, and set the standards the team builds to.
• Design AI capabilities on the platform where they add real value, including Now Assist experiences, virtual agent, and workflow automation, and where agents are the right answer, design agentic patterns that operate inside governed ServiceNow workflows and integrate with the enterprise AI Agent Fabric.
• Establish evaluation, monitoring, and guardrails so AI capabilities are reliable, safe, and observable in production.
• Own the integration and data architecture on the platform. APIs, webhooks, event driven patterns, and clean data flows between ServiceNow, enterprise applications, and systems of record.
• Ensure systems of record retain authoritative ownership of records, approvals, and compliance workflows.
• Collaborate with enterprise architecture, platform engineering, and security teams to establish scalable solution patterns.
• Represent ServiceNow in the cross platform architecture forum with peers like SAP, Snowflake, and MDM.
• Establish architecture standards covering security, privacy, compliance, auditability, and enterprise governance, including Responsible AI for the AI work we take on.
• Design controls and guardrails so solutions operate safely within governed workflows, and build governance into solution designs rather than adding it later.
• Partner with central UX and the Associate Experience UX Council so what we build meets our design and usability standards. You care about how people actually use the platform, not just whether the workflow runs.
• Ensure solutions meet enterprise standards for data protection, access control, monitoring, and operational support.

Benefits

• Annual bonus pay based on performance, per plan terms.
• Comprehensive and market-competitive benefits to meet the needs of our associates and their families.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal