Senior Staff Data Platform Software Engineer

ServiceNow•San Diego, CA

3d•$181,200•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer with the Data Platform organization, you will design, implement, and operate features and services within ServiceNow’s cloud-native platform. You will take work from design through production, lead well-scoped team projects, and turn requirements and early ideas into technical designs and delivered solutions. You will work with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align with platform architecture and standards. The role is primarily hands-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, and help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code reviews, design feedback, and pairing. This is a flexible hybrid position requiring two days per week in a ServiceNow office. Listed offices 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, candidates must be US citizens, naturalized US citizens, or US permanent residents holding a green card.

Requirements

Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering work, such as using AI-powered coding or operational tools, automating workflows, or reasoning about AI’s impact on software and infrastructure.
12 or more years of software development experience with a bachelor’s degree; or 8 or more years with a master’s degree; or 5 or more years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
At least 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.
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.
Ability to pass the required USFedPASS background screening; eligible candidates must be US citizens, naturalized US citizens, or US permanent residents holding a green card.

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 projects within the team, translating requirements and rough ideas into technical designs and delivered solutions.
Collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align work with platform architecture and standards.
Improve the reliability, scalability, and operability of built systems through tests, instrumentation, runbooks, and on-call participation.
Build operators, controllers, automation, and platform services used by other teams.
Onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.