Principal Software Engineer - Ai

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.

Role Overview

ServiceNow is seeking a Principal Architect to define and drive the technical architecture and long-term evolution of its Core Platform. The Core Platform provides the foundational capabilities that power ServiceNow applications and enable customers to build, customize, integrate, and operate mission-critical workflows at enterprise scale.

In this role, you will provide technical leadership across multiple platform domains, shape architectural strategy, and drive solutions to the most complex engineering challenges involving scalability, performance, reliability, security, extensibility, and operational efficiency. You will partner with engineering and product leaders to translate business and customer needs into a coherent platform architecture and lead the execution of strategic, cross-organizational technical initiatives.

The ideal candidate is a recognized technical leader with deep expertise in large-scale distributed systems and enterprise platforms, exceptional architectural judgment, and a proven ability to influence engineering strategy and deliver measurable outcomes across teams.

Key Responsibilities

1. Platform Architecture and Technical Strategy

• Define and evolve the long-term architecture and technical strategy for ServiceNow Core Platform, ensuring foundational capabilities support enterprise scale, extensibility, security, performance, and reliability.

• Own architectural direction across multiple platform domains, establishing principles, standards, and design patterns that promote consistency and reduce complexity.

• Drive resolution of the most challenging architectural problems, balancing customer requirements, platform evolution, engineering efficiency, and long-term maintainability.

• Identify opportunities to simplify and modernize platform architecture, reduce technical debt, and improve separation of concerns across foundational services.

• Influence platform roadmaps and investment decisions through clear architectural recommendations, technical analysis, and measurable business and customer outcomes.

2. Scalability, Performance, and Reliability

• Architect solutions that enable the platform to scale efficiently across large numbers of customers, instances, workloads, and diverse usage patterns.

• Drive improvements in runtime architecture, workload isolation, resource utilization, database access, service communication, and execution efficiency.

• Establish architectural approaches for resilience, fault isolation, graceful degradation, and predictable performance under varying workloads.

• Use telemetry, performance data, and production insights to identify systemic bottlenecks and prioritize high-impact architectural improvements.

• Champion engineering practices that prevent customer-impacting regressions and improve service reliability, availability, and operational excellence.

   

3. Cross-Organizational Technical Leadership

• Lead architecture for strategic initiatives spanning multiple engineering teams and platform domains, driving alignment on technical direction and implementation trade-offs.

• Partner with engineering, product management, security, and operations leaders to translate customer needs and business priorities into actionable architecture and engineering plans.

• Influence senior technical and organizational leaders through strong technical judgment, data-driven analysis, and clear communication.

• Mentor principal and senior engineers and technical leaders, raising the quality of architectural thinking and engineering execution across the organization.

4. Engineering Excellence and Platform Innovation

• Drive architectural improvements that accelerate engineering delivery while maintaining high standards for quality, compatibility, and reliability.

• Champion automation, continuous integration, contract testing, observability, and telemetry-driven engineering practices.

• Identify opportunities to leverage AI and automation in software development, testing, platform operations, and developer productivity.

• Evaluate emerging technologies and architectural approaches, translating promising innovations into practical, scalable platform capabilities.

• Define measurable success criteria for architectural initiatives and ensure outcomes are validated through customer impact, engineering metrics, and operational results.

• Extensive experience designing and evolving large-scale enterprise software platforms, distributed systems, or cloud-based SaaS architectures.

• Deep expertise in distributed systems, multi-tenant architectures, runtime platforms, service-oriented architectures, and foundational platform engineering.

• Experience applying AI and automation to engineering productivity, software quality, and platform operations.

• Experience architecting enterprise SaaS platforms operating at significant scale with extensive customer customization and integration requirements.

• Proven ability to define architecture across multiple technical domains and lead complex, cross-team engineering initiatives.

• Strong understanding of performance engineering, scalability, reliability, fault isolation, security, and operational resilience.

• Deep knowledge of API architecture, platform extensibility, backward compatibility, and integration patterns.

• Demonstrated ability to influence engineering strategy and technical decisions across organizational boundaries without relying on direct reporting relationships.

• Exceptional architectural judgment, with the ability to evaluate complex trade-offs and translate technical strategy into incremental, executable plans.

• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts and recommendations to senior engineering and executive leadership.

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.

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 [email protected] 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. 

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