Principal Software Engineer

About the Team:

 

The Security and Risk Engineering organization is a dynamic group of builders, thinkers, and problem-solvers dedicated to delivering scalable, world-class AI-powered security solutions to reduce risk and protect the company and our customers.  We value AI first solutions, clean architecture, intuitive user experiences, and a culture of continuous improvement. Security is a key strategic growth area for ServiceNow, and every engineer here plays a key role in driving innovation and shaping the quality and reliability of our security and risk products.

 

 

What you get to do in this role

• Define the technical vision and architecture for AI-native security solutions, leveraging frontier models, agentic AI, reasoning, retrieval, knowledge systems, and advanced ML techniques.
• Explore and apply emerging AI capabilities to solve complex cybersecurity problems in fundamentally new ways—not simply augment existing products with AI.

• Define technical architecture and engineering standards that improve scalability, reliability, performance, and maintainability.

• Partner closely with Product, UX, security researchers, customers, and engineering leaders to identify high-value problems and translate them into differentiated product experiences.
• Champion AI-native engineering practices, including extensive use of AI coding agents and autonomous development, testing, evaluation, and operational workflows.
• Represent the team's technology and innovation with executives, customers, partners, and the broader engineering organization.

• Mentor senior engineers and raise the overall engineering bar through coaching and technical leadership.

 

To be successful in this role, you have

• Deep technical expertise in modern AI/ML, with demonstrated experience building production AI systems using LLMs, foundation models, agentic architectures, RAG, embeddings, knowledge retrieval, model evaluation, and related technologies.
• Strong understanding of agentic architectures, including planning and reasoning, tool use, context and memory, multi-agent systems, evaluation, observability, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop patterns.
• Strong technical foundation in software architecture, distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, data systems, and APIs, with the ability to go deep into architecture and code.
• Experience designing and building highly performant and scalable distributed systems.
• Experience with cybersecurity problems such as threat detection, vulnerability and exposure management, security operations, identity security, investigation, risk prioritization, or autonomous remediation strongly preferred.
• Strong proficiency in Python and experience with modern AI frameworks and infrastructure; experience with Java, Go, or similar languages is valuable.
• An innovator's mindset with the ability to challenge conventional approaches, identify opportunities created by rapidly evolving AI technology, and turn ambitious ideas into working products.
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity and balance rapid experimentation with the rigor required for enterprise-grade security products.
• Strong product instincts and the ability to connect technology innovation to customer problems, differentiated experiences, and business outcomes.
• Executive-level communication skills and the ability to articulate a compelling technical vision to engineers, customers, and senior leadership.

 

• 15+ years of software engineering experience, including significant technical and engineering leadership responsibility.
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering AI/ML-powered products and platforms in production.

• Strong backend engineering experience with distributed systems, APIs, microservices, and cloud-native architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to design systems that scale to enterprise workloads.

• Hands-on experience with modern AI development technologies, including frontier LLMs, agent frameworks, retrieval/vector technologies, model evaluation and observability.
• Extensive experience using AI-native development tools and coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, or equivalent as part of the software development lifecycle.

• Experience leading technical initiatives spanning multiple teams without direct authority.
• Experience with cloud platforms in Kuberneties is a must and modern DevOps practices.

• Experience in cybersecurity products or deep familiarity with modern security architectures and security operations is strongly preferred.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $221,200 - $387,100, plus equity (when applicable), variable/incentive compensation and benefits. Sales positions generally offer a competitive On Target Earnings (OTE) incentive compensation structure. Please note that the base pay shown is a guideline, and individual total compensation will vary based on factors such as qualifications, skill level, competencies, and work location. We also offer health plans, including flexible spending accounts, a 401(k) Plan with company match, ESPP, matching donations, a flexible time away plan and family leave programs. Compensation is based on the geographic location in which the role is located and is subject to change based on work location.