Database Escalation Engineer - Federal
ServiceNowAbout the role
Company Description
It all started in sunny San Diego, California in 2004 when a visionary engineer, Fred Luddy, saw the potential to transform how we work. Fast forward to today — ServiceNow stands as a global market leader, bringing innovative AI-enhanced technology to over 8,100 customers, including 85% of the Fortune 500®. Our intelligent cloud-based platform seamlessly connects people, systems, and processes to empower organizations to find smarter, faster, and better ways to work. But this is just the beginning of our journey. Join us as we pursue our purpose to make the world work better for everyone.
Job Description
Please Note: This position will include supporting our US Federal and Public Sector customers.
“This position requires passing a ServiceNow background screening, USFedPASS (US Federal Personnel Authorization Screening Standards). This includes a credit check, criminal/misdemeanor check and taking a drug test. Any employment is contingent upon passing the screening. Due to Federal requirements, only US citizens, US naturalized citizens or US Permanent Residents, holding a green card, will be considered.
In this role, you will be part or our SWAT (Software Action Team) that ensures the production reliability and scalability of our customer application(s) and infrastructure services from an operations perspective. Our engineers are responsible for restoring database/application services, guiding SRE and CS operations on any database-related issues, working with development on database defects and migrations, and strategizing the scaling of the ServiceNow platform.
The ideal candidate for this position is a software engineer with a strong background in database technologies, performance analysis of databases and RHEL, and strong troubleshooting skills. The candidate must have a passion for chasing issues of complex systems running under dynamic, real-world loads. You will work in a fast-paced, innovative environment that allows direct influence on the organization and all our customers. In this role, you will support the database infrastructure by learning the Java-based platform from end to end.
What you get to do in this role:
- Become an SME in production triage, gain broad knowledge across ServiceNow's applications, JDBC, and Java codebase relevant to the database query generation, and work with all the groups within ServiceNow, especially Engineering/Operations.
- Learn how to identify bugs and solve challenging DB performance issues quickly. SWAT provides an excellent opportunity to learn and grow as a well-rounded problem and performance analyst.
- Develop automation tools to facilitate and improve day-to-day operations, like Ansible and scripting in Python/Ruby.
Qualifications
To be successful in this role you have:
- 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.
- 4+ years of experience supporting production databases with Performance Tuning, Query Optimization, and analyzing query execution plans for Postgres/MySQL/MariaDB.
- 4+ years of experience with performance and stress testing tools and approaches for driving realistic customer simulations in large datasets for Postgres/MySQL/MariaDB environment.
- In-depth knowledge of running profile and tracing tools in the Database and Linux layer, like perf, gprof, valgrind, strace, flamegraph.
- Experience supporting or testing large-scale web-based distributed applications such as Apache/Tomcat, and WebSphere in a Linux environment
- Experience supporting applications on a SaaS, PaaS Cloud Infrastructure product/solution
- Proven experience with concurrency, multithreading, and distributed system architectures
- Exposure to the Linux platform at the sysadmin level. RHEL certification preferred.
- Strong problem-solving and analytical skills with an aptitude for learning new technologies, developing and deploying mission-critical software
- Eagerness to learn everything about the ServiceNow Platform
- Supporting federal customers on the isolated stack and being on-call weekly for support 24x7 on a rotation basis
- Working as a team lead and reviewing Postgres source code and GDB knowledge is a plus
GCS-23
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.
Apply for this role
Generate a tailored application kit with a matched cover letter, interview prep, and CV highlights — in under 60 seconds.
Apply Now →Generate Application KitFree account required — sign up in 30s