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ServiceNow is seeking a Staff Software Engineer (IC4) to lead the design, development, and delivery of complex, high-impact AI-native and cloud-native systems. This is a senior individual contributor role that combines deep software engineering fundamentals with hands-on expertise in AI/ML integration, cloud architecture, and production systems.
You will independently own critical components and features, set technical direction within your domain, and serve as a technical resource to peers and junior engineers. Key responsibilities span five areas:
**Technical Leadership & Architecture:** Lead design and architecture of production-critical AI-native systems including LLM integrations, agentic workflows, retrieval pipelines, and inference services. Own end-to-end delivery of medium-to-large features from specification through production monitoring. Make informed trade-off decisions between latency, cost, scalability, reliability, and model quality. Establish evaluation frameworks and testing strategies for AI-driven features. Design and optimize high-performance data pipelines, embedding systems, and vector stores at scale. Champion security best practices including prompt-injection defense, data privacy, PII handling, and responsible AI guardrails. Participate in architectural reviews and contribute to platform-level technical decisions.
**Mentorship & Technical Influence:** Mentor junior and mid-level engineers through pair programming, design reviews, and hands-on coaching. Conduct thorough code reviews including evaluation of prompts, agent logic, and AI/model behavior validation. Identify technical debt and lead initiatives to address it. Share knowledge through documentation and brown-bag sessions. Contribute to hiring and interview processes. Model best practices in software craftsmanship and testing discipline.
**Cross-Functional Collaboration:** Work closely with product management and other engineering teams to define requirements. Translate complex technical concepts and AI trade-offs for non-technical stakeholders. Lead root cause analysis for customer-reported issues involving model behavior, hallucinations, and retrieval quality. Participate in design reviews and technical planning sessions. Communicate clearly about design decisions, implementation challenges, and production incidents.
**Software Development Excellence:** Develop robust, maintainable, and well-tested AI-native software using Python, Java, and JavaScript. Build comprehensive unit tests, integration tests, and AI evaluation harnesses. Troubleshoot complex issues in distributed systems and cloud infrastructure. Implement secure coding practices and responsible AI guardrails. Manage deployment, monitoring, and iteration of features in production. Work with cloud services (AWS/GCP/Azure), managed AI services (Bedrock, Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI), Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.
**ServiceNow Platform Development:** Design and develop custom applications, extensions, and integrations on the ServiceNow platform. Develop workflows, business rules, and automation using ServiceNow scripting (JavaScript, GlideScript, REST APIs). Build data models, forms, and dashboards; optimize database queries for performance. Integrate third-party AI/ML services and custom APIs with ServiceNow platform services. Participate in ServiceNow upgrades and configuration management. Mentor junior engineers on ServiceNow platform capabilities.
**Customer Support & Product Excellence:** Participate in customer issue triage and root cause analysis for production ServiceNow application issues. Work closely with customer success and support teams. Provide technical guidance to customers on application usage and troubleshooting. Identify patterns in customer issues and drive improvements. Support customer escalations and gather feedback for product management.
**Requirements:**
- 10–14 years of practical software development experience, with 5+ years working with modern cloud-native and AI-native systems
- 3+ years of hands-on experience with LLM prompt engineering, agent design, and retrieval systems (RAG, semantic search, knowledge bases)
- 3+ years of demonstrated experience integrating third-party AI/ML services and platform APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, etc.)
- 2+ years of hands-on experience developing applications and extensions on the ServiceNow platform
- Strong proficiency in JavaScript/GlideScript, Python, and Java; familiarity with ServiceNow scripting patterns and APIs
- Solid understanding of ServiceNow data model, form/workflow design, and business process automation
- Solid understanding of microservices architecture, REST/streaming APIs, and modern backend frameworks (Spring Boot, FastAPI, etc.)
- Experience designing and optimizing high-performance data pipelines, embedding systems, and vector stores at scale
- Demonstrated expertise in LLM orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel) and vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, etc.)
- Experience with cloud computing platforms and managed AI services (AWS, GCP, Azure); hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code
- Proficiency with Kubernetes, containerization, CI/CD pipelines, and automated testing frameworks
- Experience developing and debugging evaluation harnesses, benchmarks, and metrics for AI/ML features
- Proven ability to troubleshoot and isolate root causes in complex, distributed, and probabilistic systems
- Strong communication skills; ability to explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences; customer-facing experience a plus
- Experience with Agile and Scrum development methodologies; comfort with iterative development and continuous improvement
- Demonstrated ability to engage with customers, understand their needs, and support issue resolution
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related field; advanced degree or significant ML/AI coursework is a plus
- Track record of taking ownership of significant technical initiatives and delivering them successfully
- Demonstrated mentorship of junior engineers or technical leadership in previous roles
