Principal 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
Principal Software Engineer
The engineering organization is a dynamic group of builders, thinkers, and problem-solvers focused on delivering scalable, AI-powered software products that improve how organizations work. 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:
The Service Operations Business Unit brings together IT Service Management (ITSM), IT Operations Management (ITOM), and CMDB capabilities on the ServiceNow Platform. This product engineering organization builds the software that helps customers deliver resilient, intelligent, and efficient enterprise services.
The Service Operations product portfolio connects incident, request, fulfillment, infrastructure visibility, service mapping, trusted configuration data, automation, and AIOps into a unified operating model. By combining service delivery with operational intelligence and trusted operational context, these products help customers move toward proactive, AI-assisted, and increasingly self-healing operations at enterprise scale.
Together, these capabilities help customers modernize how they deliver and operate services, improve reliability, reduce manual effort, and drive measurable productivity outcomes on a single platform.
What you get to do in this role:
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will architect and build assistive and autonomous AI-native products that help our customers' IT departments move into an agentic-first era. The work will span large-scale distributed systems, data ingestion, enterprise context creation and utilization, agentic harnesses, cost optimization, agentic feedback loops, and enterprise-grade user experiences.
This role requires thought leadership, deep technical expertise, strong architectural judgment, and the ability to translate business requirements into product capabilities through experimentation.
Responsibilities include:

• Define and drive the technical direction for AI-native Service Operations product capabilities that support proactive, reliable, and increasingly autonomous enterprise workflows.

• Architect scalable, reliable, and extensible systems that power service delivery, operational intelligence, automation, data processing, discovery, visibility, and AI-assisted experiences.

• Lead the design of core frameworks and platform capabilities that enable teams to build consistent, intelligent, and highly reliable products across the Service Operations portfolio.

• Help shape how AI agents, automation, operational data, trusted configuration context, and human workflows come together to improve service reliability, reduce manual effort, and increase productivity.

• Partner with product, design, platform, and engineering leaders to translate Service Operations Business Unit strategy into clear technical roadmaps and executable delivery plans.

• Drive large-scale technical initiatives from concept through delivery, balancing customer value, scalability, reliability, security, data quality, engineering velocity, and long-term maintainability.

• Establish architecture patterns, engineering standards, and best practices for distributed systems, platform services, observability, performance, data quality, and production readiness.

• Build and evolve systems that support proactive, predictive, AI-assisted, and agentic workflows across enterprise environments.

• Make clear technical trade-offs, including what should be solved now, what should be deferred, and what should not be solved.

• Design and develop reusable software components and frameworks that improve engineering velocity and product consistency across teams.

• Guide teams through complex technical decisions, design reviews, code reviews, architecture trade-offs, migration planning, and execution risks.

• Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders, helping raise the bar for engineering craftsmanship, systems thinking, operational excellence, and long-term ownership.

• Foster a culture of continuous learning, innovation, quality, accountability, and thoughtful use of AI across the engineering organization.

• Help teams adopt AI-powered tools and automation to improve engineering productivity, product reliability, and speed of innovation.

Qualifications
To be successful in this role, you have:
Core Engineering Experience

• 15+ years of related engineering experience, or equivalent practical experience.

• 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.

• Strong technical depth in Java, Python, or similar programming languages.

• Strong knowledge of data structures, algorithms, object-oriented design, design patterns, API design, and performance optimization.

• Ability to troubleshoot complex systems and optimize performance across application, service, data, and infrastructure layers.

• Familiarity with automated testing, CI/CD, performance testing, operational readiness, and modern engineering tools.

Principal-Level Leadership

• Proven ability to define technical direction, influence architecture across teams, and translate ambiguous product strategy into executable engineering plans.

• Ability to operate as a Principal IC by leading through technical credibility, collaboration, and influence rather than formal authority.

• Experience driving alignment across multiple teams, resolving technical ambiguity, and making high-impact architecture decisions.

• Ability to balance long-term architecture with pragmatic execution, customer impact, and business priorities.

• Experience mentoring senior engineers, raising engineering standards, and building reusable patterns that create leverage across teams.

• Strong judgment in deciding what to build, what to simplify, what to defer, and what not to solve.

AI-Native and Automation Experience

• Experience with AI-powered products, automation platforms, AI-assisted workflows, or agentic systems is strongly preferred.

• Ability to think critically about how AI can be integrated into enterprise workflows, decision-making, operations, and user experiences.

• Experience designing or validating AI-assisted systems, including data quality, workflow correctness, model output evaluation, inference consistency, observability, safety controls, or human-in-the-loop review.

• Understanding of how to build reliable and trusted AI-assisted capabilities in enterprise environments.

Relevant Domain Experience

• Experience with enterprise service management, IT operations, CMDB, discovery, service mapping, AIOps, observability, workflow automation, endpoint management, or operational intelligence is a strong plus.

• Experience building products or platforms that connect operational data, workflow execution, automation, and user experiences is highly relevant.

• Experience working with large-scale enterprise customers, production systems, and complex migration or modernization efforts is a plus.

• Experience working closely with product, design, platform, and front-end engineering teams to deliver enterprise-grade product experiences is a plus.

Why Join Us

• Build AI-native Service Operations products that help enterprises deliver, operate, automate, and continuously improve services at scale.

• Shape the long-term technical direction for agent-assisted workflows, operational intelligence, trusted configuration context, automation, and enterprise service delivery on the ServiceNow Platform.

• Work on large-scale product and platform capabilities across data ingestion, context creation, AI-assisted experiences, intelligent operations, discovery, visibility, and workflow automation.

• Help define how AI agents, automation, and human workflows come together to create safer, more reliable, and more productive enterprise operations.

• Collaborate with teams that value craftsmanship, quality, innovation, accountability, and shared ownership.

• Use AI and automation tools to improve engineering excellence, product reliability, and developer productivity.

• Be part of a culture that encourages continuous learning, technical leadership, and meaningful customer impact.

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 [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.
From Fortune. ©2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All rights reserved. Used under license.