Staff Software Engineer, Platform Cryptography

ServiceNow•Santa Clara, CA

18h

About The Position

The Platform Security team builds foundational security infrastructure and AI-driven detection systems for enterprise-scale operations, with a mission to make security proactive, intelligent, and integrated into the ServiceNow platform. Its Cryptography group owns the platform’s cryptographic backbone across certificate lifecycle, key management, secrets distribution, and workload identity for a SaaS platform. The role focuses on architecting and delivering enterprise-scale security solutions that integrate cryptographic systems with machine learning, reasoning engines, and real-time inference. The engineer will design and operate intelligent security systems for key management, PKI, and secrets infrastructure at SaaS scale, while providing technical leadership and hands-on engineering. The work includes building reliable, secure, FIPS-compliant cryptographic services for regulated environments; owning services on Kubernetes from deployment through on-call and incident response; and assessing whether AI/ML is useful for security and cryptography problems. The position also involves collaboration across product, security architecture, and platform teams, mentoring engineers, and advancing cryptographic readiness, including post-quantum considerations.

Requirements

At least 8 years of professional software engineering experience.
Production-scale experience with Java, Go, or a comparable strongly typed language.
Strong computer science fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, object-oriented design, and distributed systems tradeoffs.
Production experience running services on Kubernetes, including deployments, Helm, and CI/CD, in a SaaS or multi-tenant environment.
Working understanding of core cryptographic primitives, including symmetric and asymmetric encryption, hashing, digital signatures, and TLS/PKI fundamentals.
Demonstrated security-first engineering habits, including secure coding practices, threat modeling, and disciplined code reviews.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience in cryptography, PKI, key management, or secrets management, including certificate lifecycle systems, HSM/KMS integration, or crypto-agility work.
Hands-on AI/ML exposure applying techniques to security or operations problems, such as anomaly detection, risk scoring, or log and telemetry analysis, or critically integrating LLM tools into engineering workflows.
Experience in regulated environments, such as FIPS 140-2/3, FedRAMP, or Common Criteria.
Exposure to post-quantum cryptography.
A track record of mentoring engineers and raising a team's security standards.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain scalable, secure cryptographic services that meet FIPS compliance and regulated-environment requirements.
Architect and operate mission-critical cryptographic services with reliability and security as core design constraints.
Own services end to end on Kubernetes in a multi-tenant SaaS environment, including deployment, scaling, on-call, and incident response.
Apply threat modeling to features and participate in security-focused design reviews.
Evaluate appropriate uses of AI/ML in cryptography and security, such as key-usage anomaly detection, certificate lifecycle risk scoring, and code review for cryptographic anti-patterns.
Collaborate with product owners, security architects, and platform teams to translate compliance and security requirements into cryptographic frameworks.
Mentor engineers on secure coding, cryptographic pitfalls, and rigorous design reviews.
Stay current with cryptographic advancements, including post-quantum readiness, and proactively bring relevant developments to the team.