Sr Staff Software Engineer

Workflow Data Fabric (WDF) connects the ServiceNow AI Platform to enterprise data wherever it lives - querying it in place, streaming it in real time, and ingesting it at scale so workflows and AI agents act on trusted, current data. We are looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to be a senior technical leader across the WDF platform organization. You will set architecture direction across multiple scrum teams, stay hands-on in the code, and own the hardest performance, scalability, and reliability problems across our data-access and data-movement products. Zero Copy Connectors and Remote Process Sync are the anchor areas for this role, with cross-team technical leadership spanning Data Fabric, Trino-based connectors, Stream Connect, ETL/Import Sets, Analytics Ingestion, and data quality.

What You'll Do

• Own end-to-end architecture for Zero Copy Connectors: the federated query path from the ServiceNow platform through a Trino-based query engine to external warehouses and lakehouses (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift, Oracle, Iceberg), including pushdown, connection pooling, caching, authentication, and connector-framework extensibility as the connector portfolio scales.
• Own the technical direction of Remote Process Sync, our instance-to-instance process synchronization framework, driving throughput, parallel processing, ordering guarantees, resiliency, and supportability for high-volume customer and product integrations.
• Drive the architecture of Private Connectivity (Reverse Tunnel), which gives the platform secure, outbound-initiated access to customer data sources behind firewalls. The work covers mTLS tunneling, SNI-based routing, stream multiplexing, and the scale, resiliency, and security needed for enterprise and regulated customers.
• Provide cross-team technical leadership across the WDF portfolio – Data Fabric tables, Trino data connectors, Stream Connect (Kafka), ETL and Import Sets, analytics ingestion pipelines, and native data quality – ensuring coherent designs, shared frameworks, and consistent security and governance patterns. 
• Lead architecture and design reviews; write and approve technical specifications; make and document build-vs-buy, protocol, and platform trade-offs with long-term maintainability in mind.
• Write production code in critical paths, prototype new approaches, and review code across teams to raise the engineering bar.
• Define and drive performance and scalability strategy: benchmarks, capacity models, and end-to-end performance validation for query, sync, streaming, and ingestion workloads before release.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for complex production and customer issues; drive root-cause analysis and turn recurring issues into durable platform fixes, observability, and runbooks. 
• Partner with Product Management, Engineering Managers, Quality Engineering, Support, and adjacent platform teams (query engine, security, cloud infrastructure) to shape roadmaps, sequence technical investments, and de-risk delivery commitments.
• Mentor and grow senior and staff engineers; build technical depth and knowledge continuity so that critical areas are never dependent on a single person.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time building and operating large-scale distributed systems or data platforms.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems and data platform fundamentals, such as query processing, data integration/replication, change data capture, streaming or batch pipelines, concurrency, consistency, and fault tolerance.
• Experience with Kubernetes-based services, multi-tenant SaaS architecture, and data security/governance (ACLs, encryption, data residency).
• Demonstrated track record of leading architecture across multiple teams and delivering complex, cross-functional platform initiatives end to end.
• Strong hands-on coding ability in at least one systems language (e.g., Java, C++, Go, Scala, or similar), with a continued practice of writing and reviewing production code.
• Proven experience diagnosing and solving performance and scalability problems in production systems, using profiling, benchmarking, and observability data.
• Ability to influence without authority – aligning engineers, managers, product, and partner teams around technical direction through clear written and verbal communication.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Trino internals, connector SPI, or other federated/distributed SQL query engines.
• Experience with lakehouse and big-data technologies such as Apache Iceberg, Apache Polaris or other Iceberg REST catalogs, Spark, or Delta Lake.
• Experience with Kafka or other event-streaming platforms, CDC, or message-driven integration frameworks.
• Hands-on experience with cloud data warehouses and lakehouses (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift) and their JDBC/REST access patterns and authentication models (e.g., OAuth).
• Experience with the ServiceNow platform (Glide), IntegrationHub, or Flow Designer.
• Hands-on experience owning customer escalations or high-severity production incidents for enterprise software.
• Familiarity with data quality, data observability, or AI-assisted data transformation.
• Open-source contributions, patents, publications

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $171,900 - $300,800, 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.