Staff Software Engineer

Software EngineeringEngineering, Infrastructure and OperationsFull-timeposted 2w 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

This role requires a blend of technical expertise, leadership skills, and the ability to foster a collaborative and innovative environment. We are looking for a Project Lead familiar with cloud-native and AI-native development practices. Our software is built around AI at its core—LLMs, agents, and retrieval systems—and runs on IaaS (Google Cloud/AWS/etc.), so familiarity with these environments and their managed AI services is a plus. Full ownership of your code will be encouraged, including deployment, testing, evaluation, and validation of both traditional and AI components. You will lead a team of software and AI engineers, coaching and mentoring them. Familiarity with CI/CD, test-driven development, and evaluation-driven development (eval harnesses for AI features) will be a benefit.

Responsibility Area: Software Development

Develop intuitive AI-native software that meets and exceeds the needs of the company
Development of technical specifications and planning, including model selection, prompt/agent design, and data/retrieval architecture
Analyze and automate tests for software components prior to delivery, and build evaluation harnesses (accuracy, regression, and hallucination checks) for AI features
Troubleshoot coding and model-behavior problems quickly and efficiently to ensure a productive workplace
Follow secure software coding practices, including AI-specific safeguards (prompt-injection defense, data privacy, PII handling, and responsible-AI guardrails)
Professionally maintain all software and create updates regularly to address customer and company concerns, including monitoring model performance and drift in production
IaaS procedures and practices, including managed AI/ML services (e.g., Bedrock/SageMaker, Azure OpenAI, Vertex AI)
Experience with Kubernetes and containerization is welcome; experience serving models or deploying inference/GPU workloads is a plus

Responsibility Area: Communication

Communicate effectively and professionally in all forms of communication with internal and external customers
Liaise with team members, management, and clients
Be transparent about challenges, failures, and successes, including the limitations and non-deterministic nature of AI systems
Deliver presentations and write progress reports for stakeholders, translating AI capabilities and trade-offs for both technical and non-technical audiences
Actively seek ways to improve business software processes and interactions, including where AI and automation can add value

Responsibility Area: Leadership

Manage individual contributors' daily tasks
Mentor software and AI engineers to ensure high product quality across both deterministic code and AI/model behavior
Perform detailed code reviews, including reviews of prompts, agent logic, and evaluation results
Evaluate performance, provide feedback and constructive criticism to team members
Set and track quarterly goals for all team members
Assist with training and recruitment activities
Provide status updates, weekly reports, and issue details to senior leadership as needed
Participate in Root Cause Analysis for customer-reported issues, including failures rooted in model behavior, hallucinations, or data/retrieval quality
Aid and support the coaching and training of other team members to ensure all employees are confident in the use of software applications and AI tooling
Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including product management, domain specialists, and engineering to define requirements and develop scalable AI-driven solutions
Stay current with the latest advancements in AI and related technologies (new models, frameworks, and techniques), and proactively identify opportunities to apply them to our products and services

Qualifications

8-12 years of practical Java experience
2 years of experience with prompt engineering and prompt/agent scripting
2 years of hands-on experience integrating third-party AI/ML services and platform APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Salesforce and other SaaS)
Proven ability to design and manage domain-specific languages, prompt templates, and agent instruction frameworks
Develop and optimize microservices that power high-performance data and embedding pipelines, handling up to 10 million rows and feeding vector stores
Proficiency in Python, Java, and JavaScript, with strong Python skills for the ML/AI ecosystem
Experience with RESTful and streaming APIs, model/inference endpoints, web services, and integration technologies
Knowledge of cloud computing and managed AI services (e.g., AWS Bedrock/SageMaker, Azure OpenAI, Google Vertex AI)
Create customer-centric AI solutions such as RAG assistants, agentic workflows, and AI-driven customer service
Create data and knowledge-base migration tools for SaaS applications, including moving embeddings and vector data between cloud instances
Experience with LLM orchestration and retrieval frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex) and vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector)
Outstanding collaboration and communication skills
Strong problem-solving and debugging skills, including working with non-deterministic AI outputs
Ability to learn quickly, take direction, work independently, and as part of a team
Ability to develop unit tests and AI evaluation harnesses (accuracy, regression, and hallucination checks) for code components, prompts, and complete applications
Ability to debug and isolate the root cause of complex issues in probabilistic and distributed systems
Experience with Agile and Scrum development methodologies
Experience with Spring Boot or similar frameworks
Experience working with APIs, REST standards, JSON, SQL, and NoSQL/vector stores
Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field; coursework or experience in ML/AI a plus

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.