Software Engineer, Backend Developer, Cloud Engineer - Software

Job Description

Service Now is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help design, build, and operate the next generation of AI-powered platform services. This role is not limited to traditional machine learning engineering. We are looking for a strong software engineer and technical lead with deep software design and architecture skills, strong coding ability, and the technical judgment to build reliable production systems at enterprise scale.

Historically, Service Now has been built around a large monolithic Java service known internally as Glide. In this team, we are modernizing the stack by building “off-Glide” Kubernetes-based microservices that operate separately from the standard Glide Java codebase. These services are primarily written in Python, with occasional integration points into Java and the broader Service Now platform.

The ideal candidate has built and operated containerized backend services in Kubernetes environments, understands distributed systems and production reliability, and can lead technical design across ambiguous problem spaces. Prior experience working on AI, GenAI, ML-powered, or data-intensive products is a strong plus.

This team is building modern AI platform services that extend Service Now’s core platform beyond the traditional monolithic architecture. We are focused on production-grade services that bring together enterprise data, AI model integrations, scalable APIs, evaluation workflows, and reliable deployment patterns.

You will work on systems that must be secure, observable, performant, and maintainable while serving real customer workflows. The work spans backend service design, distributed architecture, AI/GenAI product integration, Kubernetes-based deployment, CI/CD, model evaluation, and technical leadership across engineering teams.

You will design, build, and operate production‑grade AI platform microservices that run outside the traditional Glide Java codebase while still integrating cleanly with the broader Service Now ecosystem.

Your work may include:

• Building off-Glide Python microservices deployed on Kubernetes.
• Designing APIs, service boundaries, data models, and integration patterns for AI-enabled products.
• Modernizing monolithic workflows into scalable, independently deployable services.
• Building reliable distributed systems that handle concurrency, queueing, retries, fairness, back pressure, and failure recovery.
• Integrating frontier AI SDKs such as Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI into production software systems.
• Applying prompt engineering, structured outputs, model evaluation, and production observability to GenAI use cases.
• Designing evaluation and benchmarking workflows for AI‑powered product capabilities.
• Partnering with platform, product, security, and infrastructure teams to ship enterprise‑grade services.
• Raising the engineering bar through architecture reviews, code reviews, mentoring, and technical direction.

Off‑Glide microservices architecture

Design and ship modern backend services that run independently from the core Glide Java monolith. Define clean service boundaries, APIs, deployment patterns, and operational practices for Kubernetes-based services.

Production‑grade backend engineering

Build reliable, maintainable, and scalable services using strong software engineering fundamentals. Write high-quality code, review critical changes, improve performance, and drive long‑term technical decisions.

Kubernetes and containerized application delivery

Develop, deploy, and operate containerized applications in Kubernetes or similar environments. Help define patterns for configuration, release, observability, rollback, and operational readiness.

Distributed systems and data pipelines

Design systems that handle large payloads, high concurrency, asynchronous processing, message queues, state management, cloud storage, and distributed coordination. Build abstractions that can support multiple infrastructure backends such as PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, object storage, or equivalent technologies.

AI/GenAI product integration

Work with AI and GenAI capabilities as part of production…