Senior Staff Data Platform Software Engineer

ServiceNow•San Diego, CA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer in ServiceNow’s Data Platform organization, you will design and implement features and services for a cloud-native platform. You will take work from design through production, lead well-scoped team projects, and collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align implementations with platform architecture and standards. The role is hands-on, focused on building operators, controllers, automation, and platform services used by other teams. You will also contribute to reliability, scalability, and operability through testing, instrumentation, runbook improvements, and on-call participation, while helping onboard and mentor junior engineers. This is a flexible hybrid position requiring two days per week in a ServiceNow office. Listed office locations include San Francisco, Pleasanton, Santa Clara, and San Diego, California, and Kirkland, Washington. The position supports US Regulated Markets and requires passing ServiceNow’s USFedPASS background screening, including credit and criminal/misdemeanor checks and a drug test. Due to federal requirements, applicants must be US citizens, naturalized US citizens, or US permanent residents holding a green card. The stated base pay starts at $181,200, plus equity when applicable, variable/incentive compensation, and benefits. The posting notes that compensation varies based on qualifications, skill level, competencies, and work location.

Requirements

Experience leveraging or critically thinking about integrating AI into engineering work, such as using AI-powered coding or operational tools, automating workflows, or evaluating how AI changes software and infrastructure development.
12+ years of software development experience with a bachelor's degree; or 8+ years with a master's degree; or 5+ 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, or GCP), including core compute, networking, and IAM primitives.
A track record of delivering complex features or services as a key contributor.
Solid working knowledge of containers, CI/CD, GitOps-based delivery, and infrastructure as code.
Strong programming skills in Go, or another systems language with willingness to work primarily in Go.
Must pass the ServiceNow USFedPASS background screening, including credit and criminal/misdemeanor checks and a drug test.
Must be a US citizen, naturalized US citizen, or US permanent resident holding a green card, due to federal requirements.

Nice To Haves

Experience building Kubernetes controllers or working with the operator pattern.
Familiarity with container networking (CNI) or service mesh.
Experience with workload identity, mTLS, or secrets management.
Experience with observability, including metrics, tracing, and dashboards.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and operate cloud-native platform components and services, taking features from design through production.
Lead well-scoped team projects by translating requirements and rough ideas into technical designs and delivering them.
Collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align work with platform architecture and standards.
Contribute to the reliability, scalability, and operability of services by writing tests and instrumentation, improving runbooks, and participating in on-call.
Build operators, controllers, automation, and platform services used by other teams.
Help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.