Senior Manager, Data Platform Engineering - Kubernetes - Distributed Systems

Senior Manager, Data Platform Engineering
- Kubernetes
- Distributed Systems

It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for everyone—freeing people from busywork so they could focus on meaningful work. Today, Service Now is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our Service Now AI platform brings together any AI, any data, and any workflow— helping 85% of the Fortune 500® work smarter, faster, and better.

We're building an AI-native culture where technology and talent are unstoppable together. And we're just getting started.

Join us to put AI to work for people.

Cloud Platform — Kubernetes, Hyperscalers & Distributed Systems

We are currently seeking a Sr. Manager, Data Platform who will act as a player-coach engineering leader. You will lead a team of 6–10 engineers building and operating core platform services, owning delivery, people, and technical direction for the team's domain.

What you get to do in this role:

• You will lead, grow, and develop a team of software engineers who design, build, and operate services within the cloud-native platform — owning hiring, onboarding, coaching, performance, and career growth for every member of the team.
• You will own end-to-end delivery for your team's domain: setting priorities and roadmap with product and platform leadership, making scope and sequencing trade-offs, and ensuring commitments land predictably from design through production operation.
• You will be accountable for the reliability, scalability, and operability of the services your team runs — establishing SLOs, on-call practices, and operational reviews, and driving down incidents and toil across hyperscaler, on-prem, and sovereign environments.
• You will partner with principal and distinguished engineers, peer managers, and workload teams to align your team's work with the broader platform architecture, standards, and the needs of the teams that depend on the platform.
• You will stay close to the work as a player-coach — reviewing designs and code, weighing in on architectural decisions, and occasionally building — so that technical judgment, not just process, sets the bar for the team.
• You will build a healthy, high-trust engineering culture: clear expectations, honest feedback, an inclusive environment, and a team that raises the engineering bar for itself.
• You will communicate crisply with leadership and stakeholders about status, risks, and trade-offs, and represent the team in planning, capacity, and escalation conversations.

To be successful in this role you have:

• Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering and platform work — whether adopting AI-powered tooling across a team, automating operational workflows, building agentic systems for fleet visibility and operations, or reasoning about how AI changes the way a platform team is staffed and run.
• 10+ years building production software, including substantial hands-on experience operating distributed systems and running workloads on Kubernetes.
• 5+ years managing software engineers, with a track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong engineers and building teams that deliver.
• A track record of leading teams to deliver complex, business-critical systems or services end-to-end, from design through production operation.
• Hands-on experience with at least one major hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP), including its core compute, networking, and IAM primitives.
• Strong working knowledge of containers and Kubernetes, CI/CD and Git Ops-based delivery, and infrastructure-as-code — enough to review designs, challenge assumptions, and make sound technical trade-offs with your team.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to explain technical risks and trade-offs to both engineers and senior leadership.

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $181,200 - $317,100, plus equity (when applicable), variable/incentive compensation and benefits. Sales positions generally offer a competitive…