Staff Software Engineer - Cloud Platform— Kubernetes, Hyperscalers & Distributed Systems

Staff Software Engineer - Cloud Platform— Kubernetes, Hyperscalers & Distributed Systems

Company Description

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, ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our ServiceNow 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.

 

Job Description

To be successful in this role you have:

• You will own the design and delivery of significant components and core subsystems of our Kubernetes platform—for example secrets and certificate management, workload identity, storage, or cluster networking—from design through production operation.
• You will take a loosely defined platform problem and turn it into a design, a plan, and shipped software, with limited scaffolding from others.
• You will contribute to the architecture of distributed workloads running on the platform, working with the teams who depend on it to get the runtime and isolation model right.
• You will spend most of your time hands-on in code—operators and controllers, infrastructure automation, and platform services—and in the reviews that keep their quality high.
• You will own the operability of what you build: SLOs, failure modes, upgrade and migration paths, and on-call for your own systems.
• You will partner with senior staff and principal engineers to keep your work aligned with the wider platform architecture, and mentor engineers earlier in their careers.
• You will help us run a platform that serves regulated markets, where compliance constraints including FedRAMP shape design choices.

Qualifications

To be successful in this role you have:

• Built and operated Kubernetes platform infrastructure in production before, at meaningful scale—not just consumed it. You can point to specific subsystems you designed, shipped, and then supported through real incidents and upgrade cycles.
• 8+ years building production software, including solid experience operating distributed systems.
• Strong programming skills in Go, with production Kubernetes controller or operator work behind you.
• Hands-on depth with at least one major hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP)—its compute, networking, and IAM primitives, and where they leak into cluster design.
• A track record of owning complex components end to end, from ambiguous problem to production, whether or not you carried a lead title.
• Strong working knowledge of containers, CI/CD and GitOps-based delivery, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering and platform work—AI-powered tooling, automated operational workflows, agentic systems for fleet visibility and operations, or reasoning about AI’s impact on how infrastructure is built and run.

It also helps if you have:

• Experience with managed Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE) alongside self-managed clusters.
• Experience with container networking (CNI) and/or service mesh.
• Experience with mTLS, workload identity, and secrets management at fleet scale.
• Experience with observability—metrics, tracing, and SLOs.
• Experience with Terraform, Crossplane, or similar declarative infrastructure tooling.
• Experience designing or tuning distributed data or compute workloads on Kubernetes.

Additional Information

Work Personas

We approach our distributed world of work with flexibility and trust. Work personas (flexible, remote, or required in office) are categories that are assigned to ServiceNow employees depending on the nature of their work and their assigned work location. Learn more here. To determine eligibility for a work persona, ServiceNow may confirm the distance between your primary residence and the closest ServiceNow office using a third-party service.

Equal Opportunity Employer

ServiceNow is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, gender identity,  veteran status, or any other category protected by law. In addition, all qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with legal requirements.  

Accommodations

We strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, or are unable to use this online application and need an alternative method to apply, please contact globaltalentss@servicenow.com for assistance. 

Export Control Regulations

For positions requiring access to controlled technology subject to export control regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR), ServiceNow may be required to obtain export control approval from government authorities for certain individuals. All employment is contingent upon ServiceNow obtaining any export license or other approval that may be required by relevant export control authorities. 

From Fortune. ©2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All rights reserved. Used under license.

Experience Level

Senior Level