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

ServiceNow•Kirkland, WA

3d•$149,800 - $262,200•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer (IC4 Level) to join our Data Platform Engineering organization. You are a strong hands-on contributor who will own well-scoped components and projects within the team and deliver them end-to-end. This position will include supporting our US Regulated Markets and requires passing a ServiceNow background screening, USFedPASS (US Federal Personnel Authorization Screening Standards), which includes a credit check, criminal/misdemeanor check, and a drug test. Any employment is contingent upon passing the screening. Due to Federal requirements, only US citizens, US naturalized citizens or US Permanent Residents, holding a green card, will be considered.

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).
US citizens, US naturalized 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 — metrics, tracing, and dashboards.
Experience with managed Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE) and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform.

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.