Principal Microservices Architect

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

About Digital Technology:

We’re not yesterday’s IT department, we're Digital Technology. The world around us keeps changing and so do we. We’re redefining what it means to be IT with a mindset centered on transformation, experience, AI-driven automation, innovation, and growth.

We’re all about delivering delightful, secure customer and employee experiences that accelerate ServiceNow’s journey to become the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century. And we love co-creating, using, and highlighting our own products to do it. 

Ultimately, we strive to make the world work better for our employees and customers when you work in ServiceNow Digital Technology, you work for them. 

Job Overview

We are seeking an experienced and visionary Principal Microservices Architect to lead the design, development, and evolution of scalable, secure, and high-performing microservices architectures. This role combines deep technical expertise with strategic vision, driving the adoption of modern engineering practices to enable agile business outcomes. The ideal candidate is a thought leader with hands-on experience in microservices, cloud-native architectures, and distributed systems, who can guide teams through complex technical challenges and ensure alignment with the organization’s strategic goals.

What you get to do in this role:

• Architecture Leadership:
  • Define and implement a robust microservices architecture aligned with the enterprise's strategic direction.
  • Establish best practices and standards for microservices development, including API design, scalability, resiliency, and security.
  • Lead architectural reviews to ensure designs align with the organization's technical and business goals.
• Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement:
  • Partner with product managers, engineering teams, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable solutions.
  • Serve as a technical advisor and advocate for microservices principles across engineering and business teams.
• Technology Enablement:
  • Evaluate and recommend tools, frameworks, and platforms for building and managing microservices.
  • Drive adoption of DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines to streamline development and deployment.
  • Leverage container orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes) for microservices deployment and scalability.
• Mentorship & Development:
  • Mentor engineers and architects, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning.
  • Provide technical leadership during critical incidents and post-mortem reviews to improve system reliability.
• Governance & Standards:
  • Establish governance frameworks for service ownership, versioning, and lifecycle management.
  • Ensure compliance with security and regulatory standards, embedding security principles into the design.

Qualifications

To be successful in this role you have:

• Technical Expertise:
  • 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with 5+ years in architecting microservices-based systems.
  • Proficiency in designing scalable, resilient, and secure distributed systems using modern patterns like DDD, event sourcing, and CQRS.
  • Expertise in API design (REST/gRPC/GraphQL) and API gateway platforms.
  • Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
  • Familiarity with service mesh technologies (e.g., Istio).
  • Experience in domain-driven design (DDD) and data modeling for microservices.
• Engineering Practices:
  • Strong understanding of DevOps principles and tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitOps, Terraform).
  • Experience with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, OpenTelemetry).
• Soft Skills:
  • Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with the ability to convey complex te