THE IMPACT YOU CAN MAKE:The Director, ServiceNow Platform Lead is accountable for the strategy, operating model, architecture standards, governance, delivery quality, financial stewardship, and long-term health of Ulta Beauty's enterprise ServiceNow platform.
This leader will own the platform as a strategic enterprise capability, balancing business demand, technical sustainability, operational stability, vendor delivery, platform security, and roadmap execution. The role spans current and emerging ServiceNow capabilities across IT, People Success, Store Operations, Supplier and Brand experiences, Risk, Security, and enterprise workflow automation.
The Director will lead the ServiceNow platform team and partner closely with Product, Architecture, Security, Infrastructure, Operations, Enterprise Applications, business stakeholders, and implementation partners. This role does not own business product management or business product backlogs; instead, it ensures that ServiceNow demand is governed, sequenced, designed, delivered, and supported in a way that protects platform integrity and maximizes enterprise value.
Platform ScopeThis role will provide leadership across current and emerging ServiceNow capabilities including, but not limited to:
- IT Service Management, including Incident, Problem, Change, Knowledge, Virtual Agent, and Service Operations Workspace
- IT Operations Management, including Discovery, Service Mapping, Event Management, CMDB, and operational integrations
- Integrated Risk Management and Security Vulnerability Response
- HR Service Delivery and People Success service experiences
- Customer Service Management and enterprise case management patterns
- App Engine, custom applications, citizen development, and low-code governance
- Hardware Asset Management, Software Asset Management, certificate management, and related asset processes
- Strategic Portfolio Management capabilities where aligned to enterprise direction
- Brand, supplier, store operations, and associate experience workflow automation
- Now Assist, Virtual Agent, agentic AI, and AI-enabled service experiences
- Enterprise integrations, including automation, monitoring, vulnerability scanning, asset, service, and workflow data integrations
- Platform upgrades, patching, release governance, testing, hypercare, and operational readiness
YOU'LL ACCOMPLISH THESE GOALS BY:
Platform Strategy & Roadmap Enablement- Own and evolve the ServiceNow platform strategy, operating model, architecture standards, and enablement roadmap in alignment with enterprise priorities.
- Partner with Product Owners and business leaders to translate demand into platform-ready delivery plans, ensuring requests are clear, feasible, supportable, and aligned to platform standards.
- Support enterprise demand intake and portfolio governance by providing platform capacity, technical feasibility, sequencing, risk, cost, and dependency input.
- Partner with senior leaders across IT, People Success, Store Operations, Supplier, Brand, Risk, Security, Finance, and other functions to identify high-value workflow automation opportunities.
- Ensure the ServiceNow platform roadmap supports improved operational efficiency, employee and associate experience, risk reduction, compliance, scalability, and cost effectiveness.
Platform Architecture & Technical Standards- Own ServiceNow platform architecture standards and technical guardrails in partnership with Enterprise Architecture.
- Ensure solutions remain scalable, secure, upgradeable, supportable, and aligned with enterprise architecture principles.
- Lead architecture review governance for high-impact, cross-platform, integration-heavy, or strategically significant ServiceNow changes.
- Define and enforce standards for configuration, customization, data models, integrations, reusable components, update sets, source control practices where applicable, and application repository discipline.
- Guide decisions around reuse, rationalization, technical debt, platform patterns, and avoidance of duplicate or conflicting designs.
Platform Governance & Operating Model- Establish and mature the ServiceNow Center of Excellence operating model, including intake, prioritization support, governance, delivery standards, release management, and support transition.
- Define platform guardrails for configuration, customization, data model design, integration patterns, reuse, security, and maintainability.
- Lead governance for citizen development and low-code application delivery, including application intake, review, enablement, training, and risk-based escalation.
- Partner with Architecture, Security, Compliance, and Operations to ensure platform changes meet enterprise standards and regulatory expectations.
- Ensure high-impact and cross-platform changes receive appropriate review, testing, approval, and operational readiness planning.
Security, Risk & Compliance Governance- Ensure platform security controls, privileged access management, elevated access processes, segregation of duties, and compliance requirements are consistently enforced across ServiceNow environments.
- Partner with Security, Risk, Compliance, and Audit teams to maintain appropriate controls for sensitive workflows, regulated data, administrative access, and production changes.
- Drive governance for roles, groups, permissions, delegated administration, support access, emergency access, and vendor access.
- Ensure security and compliance requirements are incorporated into design reviews, testing, release readiness, and operational support processes.
Delivery Leadership & Execution- Lead delivery across platform enhancements, module implementations, integrations, upgrades, AI-enabled capabilities, and custom application development.
- Ensure delivery teams produce scalable, supportable, secure, and maintainable solutions that follow ServiceNow and Ulta development standards.
- Oversee release planning, defect triage, regression testing, ATF adoption, deployment readiness, hypercare, and post-release stabilization.
- Coordinate delivery across internal teams, system integrators, ServiceNow, managed service partners, and business stakeholders.
- Drive accountability for milestones, risks, dependencies, quality, documentation, and handoff into steady-state operations.
Platform Health, Reliability & Technical Sustainability- Own the health and sustainability of the ServiceNow platform across production and non-production environments.
- Lead platform upgrade, patching, clone, test, and release-readiness processes across impacted modules and stakeholder teams.
- Drive reduction of technical debt, customization risk, duplicate solutions, integration fragility, and data-quality issues.
- Establish meaningful platform health metrics, including stability, adoption, usage, backlog health, defect trends, automation outcomes, CMDB health, SLA performance, release quality, and operational readiness.
- Ensure support processes are in place for incidents, emergency changes, vendor support cases, maintenance windows, and business-critical platform issues.
CMDB, Data & Integration Leadership- Lead the strategy and governance for CMDB data quality, ownership, lifecycle management, and integration alignment.
- Partner with IT Operations, Infrastructure, Security, and application teams to strengthen CI accuracy, completeness, service mapping, and operational dependency data.
- Guide integrations with automation tools, vulnerability scanners, monitoring systems, asset sources, service channels, workforce systems, and other enterprise platforms.
- Ensure data models, integration patterns, APIs, import sets, transform maps, and automation flows are documented, supportable, and aligned to platform architecture.
Vendor, Partner & Financial Management- Own annual platform budget planning input, license strategy, vendor expenditure planning, business case support, and investment-value tracking for ServiceNow.
- Manage delivery performance across ServiceNow, system integrators, implementation partners, and managed service providers.
- Ensure partners follow Ulta's development standards, documentation expectations, security requirements, and operational readiness criteria.
- Evaluate vendor deliverables for quality, maintainability, scalability, and alignment with platform architecture.
- Support license, renewal, utilization, and value-realization discussions to ensure Ulta maximizes its ServiceNow investment.
- Identify opportunities to rationalize spend, increase reuse, reduce duplicate tooling, improve license utilization, and improve platform ROI.
Team Leadership & Talent Development- Build, lead, and develop a high-performing ServiceNow platform team across architecture, development, administration, QA, release, and operations capabilities.
- Provide clear direction, coaching, performance management, and growth paths for platform team members.
- Raise the technical bar for ServiceNow delivery through standards, code reviews, design reviews, knowledge sharing, and reusable patterns.
- Create a collaborative culture that balances speed, quality, accountability, and long-term platform stewardship.
- Represent the ServiceNow platform in leadership forums and communicate complex technical topics clearly to executive and business audiences.
ESSENTIALS FOR SUCCESS:- 10+ years of progressive technology leadership experience, including enterprise platform, workflow, ITSM, enterprise applications, or digital transformation leadership.
- 5+ years of ServiceNow experience or comparable leadership of large-scale workflow/platform ecosystems.
- Experience establishing and scaling a ServiceNow Center of Excellence or enterprise platform operating model.
- Experience leading managers, technical teams, system integrators, and cross-functional delivery teams.
- Strong understanding of ServiceNow platform capabilities, including ITSM, ITOM, CMDB, IRM/GRC, HRSD, CSM, App Engine, Flow Designer, UI Builder, Virtual Agent, Now Assist, integrations, and platform administration.
- Experience with platform architecture governance, release management, testing, upgrade planning, operational readiness, and post-go-live support models.
- Experience establishing technical standards for configuration, customization, data models, integrations, source control practices, update sets, application repository discipline, and reusable components.
- Demonstrated ability to lead complex programs with multiple vendors, business stakeholders, security/compliance requirements, and enterprise dependencies.
- Strong understanding of CMDB governance, data quality, CI lifecycle, Discovery, Service Mapping, and operational integrations.
- Ability to translate enterprise strategy into a practical platform roadmap, delivery plan, operating model, and measurable outcomes.
Preferred Experience- ServiceNow Certified System Administrator, Certified Application Developer, Certified Implementation Specialist, or Certified Technical Architect credentials.
- Experience in retail, multi-site operations, associate experience, HR service delivery, supplier/brand workflows, or enterprise shared services.
- Experience launching or governing citizen development, App Engine, low-code/no-code programs, or enterprise workflow automation practices.
- Experience with AI-enabled service experiences, Now Assist, Virtual Agent, agentic AI concepts, or intelligent workflow automation.
- Experience with ITIL, Agile delivery, product partnership models, portfolio governance, and enterprise architecture governance.
Core Capabilities- Enterprise platform ownership and strategic thinking
- Strong technical judgment with executive-level communication
- Ability to balance innovation, governance, speed, quality, security, and operational stability
- High accountability for delivery outcomes, platform health, financial stewardship, and value realization
- Ability to influence across senior stakeholders, Product, Architecture, Security, vendors, and Operations
- Pragmatic problem-solving with a bias toward reusable, scalable, and maintainable solutions
- Strong talent leadership, coaching, and team-building capability
Success Measures- A clear and governed ServiceNow platform roadmap aligned to enterprise priorities.
- Improved platform stability, release quality, upgrade readiness, and operational support maturity.
- Stronger CMDB ownership, data quality, service mapping maturity, and integration reliability.
- Measurable adoption of reusable platform patterns and reduction of duplicate or one-off solutions.
- Improved delivery predictability across internal teams and implementation partners.
- Improved adoption, SLA performance, workflow automation outcomes, productivity gains, and license utilization.
- Consistent enforcement of platform security controls, access governance, segregation of duties, and compliance requirements.
- Increased value realization from ServiceNow licenses, modules, automation, and AI-enabled capabilities.
- A mature platform team and operating model capabl
