ServiceNow · 2 months ago
Principal Software Engineer
4810 Eastgate Mall, San Diego, CALIFORNIA, United States
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/Staff
$196K/yr - $342K/yr
15+ years expServiceNow is a global market leader in innovative AI-enhanced technology based in San Diego, California. They are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to define, architect, and build the next-generation Workflow Automation Engine, focusing on scaling automation capabilities and enhancing enterprise workflows.
Agentic AIBusiness Process Automation (BPA)Cloud ManagementEnterprise SoftwareRobotic Process Automation (RPA)SaaS
Responsibilities
Design and develop scalable, maintainable, and reusable software components with a strong emphasis on performance and reliability
Collaborate with product managers to translate requirements into well-architected solutions, owning features from design through delivery
Build intuitive and extensible user experiences using modern UI frameworks, ensuring flexibility for customer-specific needs
Contribute to the design and implementation of new products and features while enhancing existing product capabilities
Integrate automated testing into development workflows to ensure consistent quality across releases
Participate in design and code reviews ensuring best practices in performance, maintainability, and testability
Develop comprehensive test strategies covering functional, regression, integration and performance aspects
Foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement by sharing best practices in engineering and quality
Promote a culture of engineering craftsmanship, knowledge-sharing, and thoughtful quality practices across the team
Qualification
Required
Experience in leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into work processes, decision-making, or problem-solving. This may include using AI-powered tools, automating workflows, analyzing AI-driven insights, or exploring AI's potential impact on the function or industry
15 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 12 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 8 years experience; or equivalent experience
15 years of experience in software engineering, with a track record of delivering high-quality products
Proficiency in Python, Java, or similar object-oriented languages
Experience with modern front-end frameworks such as Angular, React, or Vue
Strong knowledge of data structures, algorithms, object-oriented design, design patterns, and performance optimization
Familiarity with automated testing frameworks (e.g., JUnit, Selenium, TestNG) and integrating tests into CI/CD pipelines
Understanding software quality principles including reliability, observability, and production readiness
Ability to troubleshoot complex systems and optimize performance across the stack
Experience with AI-powered tools or workflows, including validation of datasets, model predictions, and inference consistency
Comfort with development tools such as IDEs, debuggers, profilers, source control, and Unix-based systems
Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of our core backend and workflow engine frameworks, ensuring they are highly scalable, performant, and resilient across millions of transactions and automation flows
Drive major initiatives related to the integration of AI, automation, and flow orchestration into our platform's core engine, enabling next-generation intelligent workflows
Evaluate, design, and champion distributed systems architectures, messaging frameworks, and data persistence strategies that ensure low-latency, high-throughput performance at enterprise scale
Mentor and guide engineers across multiple teams, fostering a culture of technical depth, performance-first thinking, and engineering excellence
Collaborate with product managers, architects, and UI engineers to translate complex workflow and automation requirements into elegant, extensible, and fault-tolerant backend systems
Champion observability, reliability, and efficiency through strong design principles, metrics-driven performance tuning, and advanced debugging practices
Build high-quality, clean, modular, and reusable code by enforcing best practices around system design, API contracts, testing, and code reviews
Work with product owners and AI/automation leads to own features end-to-end — from architectural design and performance modeling to deployment and continuous optimization
Design and implement backend services that empower customers to build, execute, and monitor complex workflows at scale, while ensuring extensibility and configurability
Contribute to the design and implementation of new workflow engine features and performance frameworks, while continuously enhancing the scalability and reliability of the existing ecosystem
Plan, lead, and execute large-scale backend modernization and re-platforming efforts, considering architectural trade-offs, system risks, and long-term maintainability
You will architect and build core services, orchestration engines, and asynchronous processing frameworks that power the automation and AI fabric of the platform — running both on our infrastructure and across public clouds
Develop robust backend integrations with other systems and services using REST, gRPC, and event-driven paradigms, ensuring secure, performant, and maintainable interfaces
Collaborate closely with infrastructure and platform engineering teams to optimize deployment pipelines, runtime performance, and scalability across multi-tenant environments
Proven experience in building workflow engines, orchestration frameworks, message queues, or event-driven architectures
Strong background in distributed systems, microservices architecture, and data consistency patterns (CQRS, Saga, eventual consistency, etc.)
Deep understanding of scale, performance, and reliability engineering — including load testing, capacity planning, and latency analysis
Demonstrated track record of innovation — conceptualizing, prototyping, and implementing new ideas that improve platform capabilities or developer productivity
Proficiency in API design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC) and secure service communication patterns
Strong foundation in asynchronous programming, multi-threading, and non-blocking I/O
Experience with observability tooling (Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, ELK) and distributed tracing
Strong understanding of CI/CD, automated testing, and blue-green or canary deployment models
Proven ability to lead architectural discussions, drive complex technical decisions, and mentor senior engineers
Excellent communication skills with a collaborative mindset across cross-functional teams
Preferred
Exposure to or collaborating with AI research teams, applied ML systems, or large-scale data platforms is highly desirable
Experience with AI-native or automation platforms is a strong plus (e.g., ServiceNow Flow Designer, RPA, Task Mining, Process Mining)
Benefits
Health plans, including flexible spending accounts
A 401(k) Plan with company match
ESPP
Matching donations
A flexible time away plan
Family leave programs
Company
ServiceNow
ServiceNow is an AI platform that delivers IT operations, field service management and app engine solutions.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
ServiceNow has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (910)
2024 (876)
2023 (807)
2022 (840)
2021 (447)
2020 (439)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$83.7MKey Investors
Sequoia CapitalJMI Equity
2022-12-09Post Ipo Equity
2012-07-29IPO
2012-03-20Private Equity· $10.98M
Leadership Team
Bill McDermott
Chairman and CEO
Pat Casey
Chief Technology Officer & EVP of DevOps
Recent News
Company data provided by crunchbase