Staff Software Engineer

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 and the ability to foster a collaborative and innovative environment. We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer 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 work with 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

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
• 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

Qualifications

• 8-10 years of practical software development experience
• 2 years of experience with prompt engineering and prompt/agent scripting
• Agentic delivery experience. Direct experience authoring agentic instructions and prompts, designing AI-driven autonomous workflows, and building the evaluation and testing that verifies them. This is required, not preferred.
• Engineering fundamentals. Strong command of data structures, algorithms, system design, APIs, data modeling, and testing. Proficiency in front-end development with a modern component framework, server-side development, relational data modeling, and REST and GraphQL API design.
• Develop and optimize microservices that power high-performance data, handling up to 10 million rows
• Experience with RESTful and streaming APIs, model/inference endpoints, web services, and integration technologies
• Create customer-centric AI solutions such as RAG assistants, agentic workflows, and AI-driven customer service
• Outstanding collaboration and communication skills.
• Mentorship. Demonstrated mentorship of less-experienced engineers and a record of raising quality through code review.
• 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 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 [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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