Staff Software Engineer

ServiceNow•San Diego, CA

About The Position

The GAIL (Get AI Live) program deploys engineers directly into strategic customer engagements to drive real AI adoption and measurable value realization. The GAIL Core Team is the permanent engine behind that program — the stable foundation of institutional knowledge, tooling ownership, and senior expertise that makes every engagement, and every rotating engineer, better than the last. As a Staff Software Engineer on the GAIL Core Team, you will own the hardest engagements, set the quality standard for the entire practice, and build the infrastructure that scales it. This is hands-on, customer-facing work — not theoretical process — and it compounds in impact with every engagement you lead, and every engineer you bring up behind you.

Requirements

6+ years of software engineering experience, ideally with a mix of enterprise product work and hands-on customer or field delivery.
Strong coding ability in JavaScript and one or more additional languages (Java, Python, or equivalent), with a track record of building and shipping production-quality solutions.
Experience deploying or integrating AI features and GenAI models — including Now Assist, AI Agents, or equivalent platforms — in real customer environments.
Familiarity with prompt engineering and the judgment to tune non-deterministic outputs for reliability and production-grade clarity.
A bias for standards over shortcuts — you know when a playbook gate applies, when it doesn't, and you own that call with clear reasoning.
A builder's instinct for shared tooling and reusable patterns — you don't reinvent the wheel when you can build something the whole program can use.
The ability to mentor effectively — you raise the level of the engineers around you through direct coaching, not just example.
Strong communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences, including customer-facing executive stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Lead the most complex GAIL and Go-Live Support engagements — large-scale enterprise deployments, escalations, and high-stakes go-lives where depth and experience matter most.
Own and evolve the GAIL playbook — keeping deployment standards, required gates, and prescribed sequences current, accurate, and actionable across the program.
Build, maintain, and push shared GAIL tooling across all engagements — reducing reinvention and raising the floor for every engineer in the rotation.
Mentor and ramp incoming GAIL engineers through structured onboarding, shadowing, and coaching on first customer interactions.
Capture patterns from complex deployments and feed them into the team's knowledge base — turning hard-won lessons into reusable assets that proactively uplift the whole team.
Drive quality standards across the GAIL practice — defining what great looks like and holding the line on it.
Partner with product and engineering to surface field signal from customer engagements and close the feedback loop.