Director, Software Engineering Management

ServiceNow · San Francisco

Software EngineeringEngineering, Infrastructure and OperationsFull-timeposted 8d ago

Company Description

It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for everyone—freeing people from busywork so they could focus on meaningful work. Today, ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our ServiceNow AI platform brings together any AI, any data, and any workflow— helping 85% of the Fortune 500® work smarter, faster, and better. We're building an AI-native culture where technology and talent are unstoppable together. And we're just getting started.

Join us to put AI to work for people.

Job Description

The engineering organization is a dynamic group of builders, thinkers, and problem-solvers focused on delivering scalable, AI-powered software products that improve how IT organizations function and deliver value. We value clean architecture, intuitive experiences, operational excellence, and a culture of continuous improvement. Every engineer plays an important role in shaping the quality, reliability, and long-term success of our products.

About the Team

You'll join a small, founding engineering team building a new product from the ground up with the mandate and latitude to make foundational decisions on architecture, stack, and engineering practices. This is a rare setup: startup-level speed, ownership, and blank-canvas building, backed by the distribution, resources, and scale of ServiceNow. The team is still small and early-stage today, which means the Director hired into this role will have outsized influence over how the engineering org is shaped from here — team structure, technical standards, and culture included.

Responsibilities include:

Collaborate with stakeholders across Product, Design, Security, Operations, Sales, and Customer Success — aligning on roadmap and release readiness, meeting security and compliance requirements, and feeding field and customer signal back into engineering priorities.
Own technical strategy and delivery for your teams. Set architectural direction, hold the bar on quality and reliability, and stay close enough to the work to validate hypotheses through evidence, not theory.
Hire, coach, and develop engineers, tech leads, and managers. Build inclusive, high-performing teams with clear career paths and durable ownership.
Lead the evolution of current solutions toward AI-native capabilities, identifying where agentic patterns, data utilization, or autonomous workflows can unlock customer value, and translate those recommendations into staffed, executable work.
Establish architecture patterns, engineering standards, and operating rhythms specific to your problem domain. Document tradeoffs, rationale, and implementation guidance to help teams move faster and make consistent decisions.
Collaborate across the broader org to share learnings, validate approaches, and accelerate adoption of patterns that work.

Qualifications

To be successful in this role, you have:

15+ years of related engineering experience, including 7+ years leading and managing engineering teams for a product at scale. A significant portion of the experience should be in startups building 0-1 products, taking them to market, and rapidly scaling users using PLG motions and experiments.
Strong experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems, enterprise platforms, workflow systems, data-intensive products, integration frameworks, or cloud-scale infrastructure.
Deep understanding of system design for scale, reliability, observability, fault tolerance, data quality, security, and production readiness.
Proven ability to define technical direction, influence architecture across teams, and translate ambiguous product strategy into executable engineering plans.
Demonstrated success in building a high performance culture within in a team of senior engineers without compromising wellbeing.
Ability to lead through formal authority and technical credibility alike, building alignment across peer engineering, Product, Design, Security, Operations, Sales, and Customer Success organizations.
Strong judgment in balancing long-term architecture with pragmatic execution, customer impact, engineering velocity, and business priorities.
Strong experience with AI-powered products, AI-assisted workflows, and the extensive use of AI in the SDLC.

Why Join Us

Join as a founding Director-level engineering leader on a net-new product, at a stage where product, team composition, and engineering culture are still being actively defined.
Operate with significant autonomy over technical direction and team-building decisions.
Build with modern, cloud-native tooling and patterns, unconstrained by existing platform conventions.
Work on a product with real urgency and a near-term launch target, where your decisions have immediate, visible impact rather than being one layer removed from outcomes.
Get the best of both worlds: the speed and ownership of an early-stage build, with the backing, resources, and distribution of ServiceNow.
Partner directly with a small, senior technical team to define how AI agents, automation, and human workflows come together with the freedom to make foundational calls that will shape the product for years.

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $221,200 - $387,100, plus equity (when applicable), variable/incentive compensation and benefits. Sales positions generally offer a competitive On Target Earnings (OTE) incentive compensation structure. Please note that the base pay shown is a guideline, and individual total compensation will vary based on factors such as qualifications, skill level, competencies, and work location. We also offer health plans, including flexible spending accounts, a 401(k) Plan with company match, ESPP, matching donations, a flexible time away plan and family leave programs. Compensation is based on the geographic location in which the role is located and is subject to change based on work location.

Additional Information

Work Personas

We approach our distributed world of work with flexibility and trust. Work personas (flexible, remote, or required in office) are categories that are assigned to ServiceNow employees depending on the nature of their work and their assigned work location. Learn more here. To determine eligibility for a work persona, ServiceNow may confirm the distance between your primary residence and the closest ServiceNow office using a third-party service.

Equal Opportunity Employer

ServiceNow is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, gender identity, veteran status, or any other category protected by law. In addition, all qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with legal requirements. 

Accommodations

We strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, or are unable to use this online application and need an alternative method to apply, please contact globaltalentss@servicenow.com for assistance.

Export Control Regulations

For positions requiring access to controlled technology subject to export control regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR), ServiceNow may be required to obtain export control approval from government authorities for certain individuals. All employment is contingent upon ServiceNow obtaining any export license or other approval that may be required by relevant export control authorities.