Staff Software Engineer, Platform Cryptography

ServiceNow•Santa Clara, CA

1d•$166,500 - $291,400•Hybrid

About The Position

Platform Security builds foundational security infrastructure and AI-driven detection systems for enterprise-scale operations. Our mission is to make security proactive, intelligent, and seamlessly integrated into the ServiceNow platform. Cryptography within Platform Security owns the cryptographic backbone of the ServiceNow platform across multiple domains: certificate lifecycle, key management, secrets distribution, and workload identity for a SaaS platform. This is core, regulated-environment security engineering. As a Staff AI Security & Crypto Engineer, you will architect and deliver enterprise-scale security solutions that integrate cryptographic systems with machine learning, reasoning engines, and real-time inference. You will bring deep expertise in applied cryptography, strong technical leadership, and hands-on machine learning depth — designing and operating intelligent, adaptive security systems for key management, PKI, and secrets infrastructure at SaaS scale.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in professional software engineering experience
Java, Go, or a comparable strongly-typed language at production scale
Strong CS fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, OO design, distributed systems tradeoffs
Production experience running services on Kubernetes (deployments, Helm, CI/CD) in a SaaS/multi-tenant environment — this is assumed, not a differentiator
Working understanding of core cryptographic primitives (symmetric/asymmetric encryption, hashing, digital signatures, TLS/PKI fundamentals)
Demonstrated security-first engineering habits: secure coding practices, threat modeling, code review discipline

Nice To Haves

Direct experience in cryptography, PKI, key management, or secrets management certificate lifecycle systems, HSM/KMS integration, or crypto-agility work
Hands-on AI/ML exposure
Experience applying ML techniques to security/ops problems (anomaly detection, risk scoring, log/telemetry analysis) or critically integrating LLM tooling into engineering workflows
Experience with regulated environments (FIPS 140-2/3, FedRAMP, common criteria, or similar)
Exposure to post-quantum cryptography
Track record mentoring engineers and raising the security bar on a team, not just shipping features

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain high-quality, scalable, secure cryptographic services meeting FIPS compliance and regulated-environment requirements
Architect and operate mission-critical crypto services with reliability and security as first-class design constraints, not afterthoughts
Own services end-to-end on Kubernetes in a multi-tenant SaaS environment - deployment, scaling, on-call, incident response
Bring a security mindset to every design review: threat model the feature, not just the happy path — this is a deliberate area we're leveling up as a team
Evaluate where AI/ML has a legitimate role in the crypto/security space — anomaly detection in key usage, ML-assisted certificate lifecycle risk scoring, AI-assisted code review for cryptographic anti-patterns — and separate that from where it's a distraction
Collaborate with product owners, security architects, and platform teams to translate compliance and security requirements into working cryptographic frameworks
Mentor engineers on secure coding, cryptographic pitfalls, and design review rigor
Stay current on cryptographic advancements, including post-quantum readiness, and bring that forward before it's a compliance deadline