Staff Software Engineer - Data Platform - Kubernetes - Distributed Systems - Federal

Position Location:
This is a Flexible (Hybrid) position.  Flexible positions require 2 days per week in a ServiceNow office location.  We have offices in several locations, including San Francisco, CA; Pleasanton, CA; Santa Clara, CA; San Diego, CA; and Kirkland, WA

Please Note:  This position will include supporting our US Regulated Markets.
“This position requires passing a ServiceNow background screening, USFedPASS (US Federal Personnel Authorization Screening Standards). This includes a credit check, criminal/misdemeanor check and taking a drug test. Any employment is contingent upon passing the screening.  Due to Federal requirements, only US citizens, US naturalized citizens or US Permanent Residents, holding a green card, will be considered.

About the team:
As a Staff Software Engineer with the Data Platform organization, you will be responsible for designing and implementing features and services within our cloud-native platform.

What you get to do in this role:

• You will design, build, and operate components and services within the cloud-native platform, taking features from design through to production.
• You will lead well-scoped projects within your team, turning requirements and rough ideas into solid technical designs and delivering them.
• You will collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align your work with the platform’s architecture and standards.
• You will contribute to the reliability, scalability, and operability of what you build — writing tests and instrumentation, improving runbooks, and participating in on-call.
• You will spend most of your time hands-on building — operators, controllers, automation, and platform services that other teams depend on.
• You will help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.

To be successful in this role you have:

• Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering work — whether using AI-powered coding and operational tooling, automating workflows, or reasoning about how AI changes the way software and infrastructure are built.
• 8+ years of software development experience with a Bachelor's degree; OR 5+ years with a Master's degree; OR 3+ years with a PhD; OR equivalent work experience.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience building, deploying and operating workloads on Kubernetes.
• Working experience with at least one major hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP), including its core compute, networking, and IAM primitives.
• A track record of delivering complex features or services as a key contributor.
• Solid working knowledge of containers, CI/CD and GitOps-based delivery, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Strong programming skills in Go (or another systems language with a willingness to work primarily in Go).

It also helps if you have:

• Experience building Kubernetes controllers or working with the operator pattern.
• Familiarity with container networking (CNI) or service mesh.
• Experience with workload identity, mTLS, or secrets management.
• Experience with observability — metrics, tracing, and dashboards.

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $149,800 - $262,200, 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.