Principal 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 engineering organization is a dynamic group of builders, thinkers, and problem-solvers dedicated to delivering scalable, AI-powered software products that elevate how organizations work. We value clean architecture, intuitive user experiences, and a culture of continuous improvement. Every engineer here plays a key role in shaping the quality and reliability of our products.  

About the Team:  

The IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Operations Management (ITOM) organization unifies incident, request, fulfillment, and service resilience capabilities with end‑to‑end infrastructure visibility, service mapping, and AIOps on the ServiceNow Platform to deliver proactive, self‑healing operations and exceptional employee experiences at scale.  Together, they enable streamlined service delivery and intelligent operations at scale, tightening the loop between operations and service delivery, all targeting modernized, AI‑assisted operations and measurable productivity outcomes on a single platform. 

What you get to do in this role:  

The Principal Software Engineer plays a key role in shaping the future of ServiceNow’s platform by architecting and developing core frameworks that enhance user experience and embed generative AI capabilities. This role involves driving large-scale technical initiatives, making strategic architectural decisions, and mentoring engineers while collaborating across product and design teams to deliver innovative, high-performance solutions. We’re seeking an IC6 Principal Software Engineer with deep expertise in large-scale endpoint agent development and deployment, and microservices architecture. The role requires technical leadership to drive best practices, architecture recommendations, and standards for data collection, transport, and storage at scale. 
 

• 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. 

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.  
• Typically requires a minimum of 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. 
• 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 i