Senior Staff Software Engineer

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

The MetricBase team maintains and develops ServiceNow's proprietary time series platform. We empower ServiceNow internal application developers to build real-time applications for IoT, analytics, and cloud monitoring services. Our technology is purpose-built to handle the massive volumes of time-stamped data produced by sensors, applications, and computer infrastructure.

We're looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer with deep expertise in database systems development to help us evolve our time series platform. You will lead the technical direction of Time-series specific components of PostgreSQL-based storage engine while maintaining our legacy Java-based time series database. This role requires hands-on experience with database internals, performance optimization at scale, and the ability to mentor a growing team of engineers.

What you get to do in this role:

• Lead the development of our custom time-series specific functionality for PostgreSQL-based storage engine
• Architect and implement high-performance APIs in Java that translate time series operations to optimized JDBC queries and leverage our custom Postgres extensions
• Drive performance, reliability, and scalability improvements across our database infrastructure, with a focus on handling billions of time-stamped data points
• Maintain our legacy Java-based time series database, focusing on critical bug fixes and security patches as we transition to the new platform
• Execute the migration strategy from our legacy system to the new Postgres-based architecture, ensuring zero downtime and data integrity
• Design and optimize PostgreSQL schemas, indexes, and query patterns specifically for time series workloads with high ingestion rates and complex analytical queries
• Partner with engineering leaders to establish best practices for database development, code reviews, performance testing, and operational excellence
• Mentor 4-5 junior to mid-level engineers, providing technical guidance on database internals, performance optimization, and software engineering principles
• Collaborate with product owners to understand requirements and translate them into scalable technical solutions that balance performance, maintainability, and extensibility
• Contribute to observability and monitoring of database systems, implementing instrumentation for performance analysis and proactive issue detection
• Build software that is extensible and customizable, allowing customers to adapt functionality to their specific time series use cases

Qualifications

To be successful in this role you have: 

• Experience in leveraging critical 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.  
• 12 years of experience in software engineering, with a track record of delivering high-quality products.  
• 12 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 8 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 5 years experience; or equivalent experience.
• Expert-level knowledge of database internals, including storage engines, query optimization, indexing strategies, transaction management, and concurrency control
• Strong proficiency in C++ for systems programming, specifically for developing PostgreSQL extensions, custom storage engines, and performance-critical database components
• Advanced Java development skills for building high-performance APIs and application-layer components that interact with database systems
• Deep understanding of PostgreSQL architecture, including the ability to work with its extension framework, query planner, and storage subsystems
• Proven experience optimizing databases for time series workloads, including strategies for data compression,