Senior Staff Software Engineer - Agentic AI

ServiceNow•Santa Clara, CA

15d•$190,900 - $334,100

About The Position

ServiceNow is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer (IC5) to set technical vision and architecture across AI-native and cloud-native systems. This strategic technical leader drives innovation, shapes engineering culture, and influences platform direction, tackling complex problems involving novel AI/ML challenges and aligning technical strategy with business objectives. The role combines deep technical expertise, systems thinking, organizational influence, and mentorship of senior engineers. The engineer will lead platform and infrastructure development for AI-native systems, establish architectural standards, and guide the adoption of emerging AI/ML technologies. They will design large-scale systems and AI/ML components, including evaluation frameworks, observability, security guardrails, data platforms, embedding systems, and retrieval pipelines. The role also contributes to critical code paths, prototypes new approaches, and resolves complex production issues. The position works across engineering, product, design, leadership, customers, and partners to shape technical roadmaps and communicate technical trade-offs. It also includes ServiceNow platform architecture and integration strategy, mentoring engineers in platform development, and leading customer-critical incident response and technical escalation. The position is listed as a regular employee role with a flexible work persona; specific work location arrangements depend on the role and assigned work location.

Requirements

14+ 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.
Hands-on experience with cloud-native and AI-native systems, or equivalent senior-level roles.
Hands-on experience with LLM/AI systems at scale, including prompt engineering, agent design, retrieval systems, and production AI/ML services.
At least 5 years of hands-on experience building and scaling systems with third-party AI/ML services and platform APIs across multiple cloud providers.
At least 3 years of experience designing and building applications on platform-as-a-service or SaaS platforms.
Expert-level proficiency in Python, Java, and JavaScript/GlideScript; expertise in ServiceNow scripting, APIs, and platform architecture.
Demonstrated expertise in distributed-systems design, microservices architecture, and large-scale systems.
Track record designing high-performance, mission-critical data pipelines, embedding systems, and vector databases.
Expert knowledge of LLM orchestration frameworks, RAG architectures, retrieval optimization, and vector database technologies.
Deep expertise in cloud computing (AWS, GCP, or Azure), managed AI services, and infrastructure-as-code.
Strong background in Kubernetes, containerization, and cloud-native deployment patterns.
Expertise in building evaluation frameworks, metrics systems, and production monitoring for AI/ML systems.
Experience with secure coding practices, responsible AI, and compliance requirements.
Experience leading customer-critical initiatives or providing technical leadership on strategic accounts.

Nice To Haves

Deep expertise with the ServiceNow platform at scale is preferred.

Responsibilities

Define technical vision, strategy, multi-year roadmaps, and architectural patterns for AI-native and cloud-native systems.
Lead development of platforms and infrastructure for AI-native development, including evaluation, monitoring, security, and deployment capabilities.
Drive adoption of AI/ML technologies and establish technical standards and engineering excellence practices.
Own technical roadmaps for critical AI initiatives, evaluate feasibility, set timelines, and influence decisions involving cost, latency, reliability, and model quality.
Champion foundational improvements such as refactoring, testing infrastructure, monitoring, and security.
Mentor senior engineers and engineering leaders; support professional development and leadership growth.
Lead senior-level technical hiring and contribute to building engineering teams.
Establish and reinforce a culture of technical excellence, learning, ownership, collaboration, code quality, testing discipline, security, and responsible AI.
Conduct architectural and design reviews and provide guidance to managers and team leads.
Design large, complex systems spanning teams, cloud infrastructure, and AI/ML components.
Lead design of AI evaluation frameworks, observability systems, production monitoring, security architecture, and responsible AI guardrails.
Design high-performance data platforms, embedding systems, and retrieval pipelines.
Evaluate cloud services, managed AI services, and new technologies; make architectural decisions balancing performance, cost, scalability, reliability, developer experience, and business value.
Research and prototype novel technical approaches and emerging AI/ML techniques.
Lead root-cause analysis and architectural reviews for critical incidents and drive preventative improvements.
Communicate technical vision and strategy to executives, product leaders, and engineering teams; influence organizational priorities.
Partner with product, design, and domain specialists to define technical roadmaps aligned with business strategy.
Represent engineering in strategic customer and partnership discussions and contribute to technical due diligence for acquisitions, partnerships, and technology evaluations.
Explain AI/ML concepts, trade-offs, and limitations to technical and executive audiences; advocate for technical health and long-term sustainability.
Participate in industry forums, conferences, and communities, and lead technical interviews and design discussions.
Develop solutions to complex AI/ML integration and distributed-systems challenges; prototype approaches and share learnings.
Contribute to critical code paths and architectures and build evaluation, monitoring, and testing infrastructure.
Implement security practices, responsible AI safeguards, and compliance mechanisms.
Work architecturally with cloud services, managed AI services, Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code; troubleshoot complex production issues.
Define architecture and integration patterns for AI-native ServiceNow applications and establish ServiceNow development standards.
Guide decisions between ServiceNow platform capabilities and custom development; promote platform features and managed services and evaluate upgrades.
Partner with ServiceNow product teams and technical account managers on integrations and customizations; mentor engineers on platform architecture.
Maintain compatibility of applications with ServiceNow platform updates and evolution.
Shape customer-support and issue-resolution practices, lead customer-critical incident response and complex troubleshooting, and provide a technical escalation path.
Engage strategic customers on technical topics, roadmap alignment, and integration challenges; synthesize customer feedback for product and platform strategy.
Establish practices to improve customer experience and reduce support burden; align technical capabilities with customer success metrics.
Lead technical due diligence and provide support in customer selection and onboarding processes.