Staff Software Engineer - Data Platform - Kubernetes - Distributed Systems - Federal

ServiceNow•Santa Clara, CA

1d•$149,800 - $262,200•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Staff Software Engineer with the Data Platform organization, you will be responsible for designing and implementing features and services within our cloud-native platform. This role involves taking features from design through to production, leading well-scoped projects, and collaborating with senior engineers to align work with platform architecture and standards. You will contribute to the reliability, scalability, and operability of the platform by writing tests, improving runbooks, and participating in on-call rotations. The role is hands-on, focusing on building operators, controllers, automation, and platform services that other teams depend on. Additionally, you will help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.

Requirements

Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering work — whether using AI-powered coding and operational tooling, automating workflows, or reasoning about how AI changes the way software and infrastructure are built.
8+ years of software development experience with a Bachelor's degree; OR 5+ years with a Master's degree; OR 3+ 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, GCP), including its 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 and GitOps-based delivery, and infrastructure-as-code.
Strong programming skills in Go (or another systems language with a willingness to work primarily in Go).

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 — metrics, tracing, and dashboards.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and operate components and services within the cloud-native platform, taking features from design through to production.
Lead well-scoped projects within your team, turning requirements and rough ideas into solid technical designs and delivering them.
Collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align your work with the platform’s architecture and standards.
Contribute to the reliability, scalability, and operability of what you build — writing tests and instrumentation, improving runbooks, and participating in on-call.
Spend most of your time hands-on building — operators, controllers, automation, and platform services that other teams depend on.
Help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.