ServiceNow

Principal Software Engineer

ServiceNow • $221K — $387K *
Santa Clara, CA 95051In-Person
Enterprise Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Today
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Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of software engineering with demonstrated influence beyond immediate team.
  • Hands-on experience designing autonomous workflows and creating agentic instructions.
  • Production experience with LLM APIs and executing model or orchestration migrations.
  • Expertise in entitlement-aware data handling and access enforcement.
  • Proven experience in dataset curation and evaluation used by multiple engineers.
  • Strong skills in system design, APIs, and data modeling.
  • Ability to effectively utilize AI coding assistants in engineering.
  • Experience managing on-call support for customer-facing systems.

Responsibilities

  • Define the AI architecture and ensure effective agent reasoning in HR processes.
  • Establish boundaries for agent autonomy, deciding which HR actions require human oversight.
  • Create a versioned contract for shared instructions and tool descriptions.
  • Oversee evaluation infrastructures that ensure safe behavior changes in systems.
  • Ensure production quality and implement observability for safety metrics.
  • Set standards for AI-assisted engineering and ensure adherence to specifications.
  • Engage in hands-on tasks that address challenges in integration and system architecture.
  • Collaborate across functions to craft AI solutions that meet business requirements.

Benefits

  • Health plans including flexible spending accounts.
  • 401(k) plan with company match.
  • Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).
  • Matching donations for charitable contributions.
  • Flexible time away plan and family leave programs.
Full Job Description
Job Description

The Role
As a Principal Engineer in HRSD, you set the technical direction for model-driven capability across the HR domain, the agentic and conversational experiences that interpret employee, manager, and HR agent intent, reason over profile, case, catalog, policy, and knowledge context, and act on the user's behalf. Your unit of ownership is the architecture, standards, and evaluation infrastructure that let multiple teams ship those experiences safely - not a single feature set.

This is not an ML research role; you do not train foundation models. It is also distinct from traditional full-stack staff work, where systems follow deterministic logic. Two things shape the job: much of the load-bearing logic lives in natural language - instructions, prompts, context, tool descriptions, guardrails - and must be engineered with the same discipline as code; and because behavior is probabilistic, correctness is established through evaluation at scale, not fixed assertions.

What You'll Own
  • AI architecture for the domain. How agents are decomposed and composed, where reasoning happens, how context is assembled and bounded, how tools are exposed, and how autonomy is delegated. Own the multi-release calls: model selection and migration, orchestration approach, build-versus-adopt, and the cost/latency/quality tradeoffs behind each.
  • The autonomy boundary. Decide as domain policy which HR actions an agent may take, which require a human decision point, and which no agent should attempt. Anything changing pay, employment status, restricted records, or employee-relations matters requires a human in the path by construction - build the mechanisms that make those constraints structural.
  • The shared instruction and tool description surface. HRSD ships as product; customers configure, extend, and override this surface on their own instances. Treat it as a versioned contract with upgrade-safe extension points, deprecation paths, and compatibility guarantees.
  • Evaluation as infrastructure. Own the golden datasets, multi-turn suites, judge calibration, CI gates, and drift detection that let teams change behavior safely. Extend coverage to HR-specific failure classes: access-boundary violations, cross-scope leakage, jurisdictional and policy-variant correctness.
  • Production quality and safety. Observability for containment, hallucination rate, tool-selection error, unsafe action, and injection vectors from user-supplied content entering agent context. Because HR conversation content is itself restricted, design diagnosis that works without exposing what was said.
  • AI-assisted engineering standards. Convert ambiguous problems into testable specs; define what accountable agent-assisted delivery looks like for the domain - specification standards, review expectations, verification harnesses - and hold the line on it.
  • Hands-on where it matters. The hard integration, the risky migration, the prototype that settles an architectural argument, the incident nobody else can unblock.
  • Partner across functions. Collaborate efficiently with product, engineering, design to co-create scalable AI solutions and translate business needs into robust technical designs.


Qualifications

What You Bring
  • 10+ years of software engineering, with a record of technical direction adopted beyond your immediate team.
  • Direct, hands-on experience authoring agentic instructions and prompts, designing autonomous workflows, and building the evaluation that verifies them.
  • Production experience with LLM APIs, retrieval-grounded features, agent orchestration, tool and function calling, and structured output enforcement - including at least one model or orchestration migration carried through production.
  • Entitlement-aware data handling: per-user access enforcement in retrieval and tool layers, scope separation between roles, and handling of restricted records under audit.
  • Evaluation experience used by engineers other than yourself: dataset curation, judge calibration, CI gating, drift detection.
  • Strong command of system design, APIs, data modeling, and testing across front-end, server-side, and relational data work with a high quality mindset.
  • Effective, accountable use of AI coding assistants and agents.
  • On-call and incident-command experience on customer-facing systems, including ownership of the systemic fixes that followed.
  • Experience in software stack including Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, React and demonstrated ability to quickly learn new tools and frameworks.
  • Bachelor's degree in CS, software engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred
  • HR domain depth: case management, employee journey and lifecycle, or payroll/benefits/leave/absence sufficient to set requirements.
  • Integration with core HR, payroll, or benefits systems of record, including reconciliation and eventual-consistency patterns.
  • Contribution in a Forward deployment model to champion customer adoption.


JV21

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.

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.

About ServiceNow

ServiceNow provides cloud-based solutions that define, structure, manage, and automate services for enterprise operations in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and other countries. The company offers service management solutions, including incident, problem, change, request, and cost management as well as service catalogs; and IT, HR, facilities, and field service management solutions. It also provides IT operations management solutions covering service mapping, delivery, and assurance solutions; business management solutions such as financial management, project portfolio suite, vendor performance management, and performance analytics as well as governance, risk, and compliance; and application development services.

ServiceNow Careers

Join the dynamic team at ServiceNow, a global leader in digital workflow solutions, where innovation and leadership converge to shape the future of work. At ServiceNow, we offer more than just job opportunities; we provide a platform for professional growth and a chance to be part of a culture that values diversity, creativity, and continuous learning.

Work You’ll Do

Embark on a career journey with ServiceNow and contribute to the world’s leading enterprises' digital transformation. Our team is at the forefront of developing cutting-edge technologies that improve how people work. With ServiceNow, you will use your skills to impact businesses and industries profoundly, driving efficiency and innovation.

Join Our Market-Leading Team

ServiceNow is not just another technology company. We are a team that thrives on diversity and leadership, fostering an inclusive environment that promotes growth and development. Our commitment to diversity training ensures that every team member can achieve their potential.

Innovative Work

ServiceNow is home to more than 10,000 dedicated professionals who lead the charge in digital workflows and enterprise solutions. As part of our team, you will engage in projects that merge technology with practical applications, creating revolutionary products that advance how services are delivered and managed.

Career Development

At ServiceNow, your career trajectory is filled with boundless opportunities. We support your growth with robust training programs, leadership development courses, and access to global challenges. Whether you are looking for an internship, full-time position, or leadership role, ServiceNow equips you with the tools to excel.

Be Part of a Great Team

Working at ServiceNow means being part of a community that values teamwork and innovation. Our collaborative environment encourages networking and sharing ideas, making our workplace vibrant and dynamic. The benefits of joining ServiceNow extend beyond comprehensive health and wellness; they include fostering professional connections and friendships that last a lifetime.

Explore Job Opportunities and Internships

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a recent graduate, ServiceNow offers a range of employment options to suit your career goals. From internships that provide real-world experience to full-time positions that challenge you to leverage your expertise, we are committed to hiring the best talent.

Stay Connected

Join Our Team Search open positions that match your skills and interests. At ServiceNow, we look for passionate, curious, and solution-driven team players. Explore the possibilities that await you at a company that is committed to your professional success.

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ServiceNow Careers

Empowering professionals to achieve more, ServiceNow is where careers are future-proofed, and ambitions are realized. Join us in our journey of growth and innovation.
Learn more about ServiceNow
Size
16,881 employees
Market Cap
$76.5 billion
Industry
Information Technology
Net Income
$118.5 million
Founded
2004
5 Year Trend
+33.5%
Revenue
$4.5 billion
NASDAQ
NOW
* Ladders Estimates

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