Principal DevOps Engineer - Core Infrastructure & Cloud Platform Engineering

It all started in sunny San Diego, California in 2004 when a visionary engineer, Fred Luddy, saw the potential to transform how we work. Fast forward to today — ServiceNow stands as a global market leader, bringing innovative AI-enhanced technology to over 8,100 customers, including 85% of the Fortune 500®. Our intelligent cloud-based platform seamlessly connects people, systems, and processes to empower organizations to find smarter, faster, and better ways to work. But this is just the beginning of our journey. Join us as we pursue our purpose to make the world work better for everyone.

We are seeking a highly collaborative Principal DevOps Engineer to join our Systems Engineering team at ServiceNow. In this technical leadership role, you will architect infrastructure solutions, define technical strategy, and drive innovation across our core systems and infrastructure, with particular emphasis on virtualisation, containerisation, and cloud-native technologies. 

As a Principal DevOps Engineer, you will work at the intersection of technical excellence and business strategy, partnering with stakeholders across the organisation to deliver scalable, performant, and resilient cloud infrastructure solutions. You will coach and advise engineers at all levels whilst building strong relationships with technical leadership peers to foster collaboration and innovation. 

This is an opportunity to shape the future of infrastructure at a leading enterprise software company, working with modern cloud-native tooling and open-source technologies at scale. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Architect infrastructure solutions across virtualization, containerisation, and cloud-native platforms, with deep focus on Kubernetes ecosystem design and deployment in hybrid environments 

• Define technical strategy and roadmaps for the team, aligning infrastructure initiatives with business objectives and priorities to define elegant solutions 

• Partner with internal stakeholders on cross-team technology initiatives, influencing decision-making up to executive levels 

• Coach and advise DevOps engineers at all levels, supporting the growth of engineering capability across the team 

• Present technical strategies and proposals to senior leadership with clarity and conviction 

• Support the management team in establishing technical and product roadmaps aligned with organisational goals 

• Apply architectural understanding to high-level design proposals, iterating for improved performance, resilience, scalability, and security 

• Foster continuous innovation by staying current with cloud-native and AI technology developments 

 

To be successful in this role you have:

Technical Leadership & Strategy 

• Demonstrated ability to influence decision-making with stakeholders up to executive levels 

• Proven experience defining technical strategy and roadmaps for infrastructure teams 

• Strong track record of building and presenting compelling technical visions to senior leadership 

• Ability to understand business context and translate it into appropriate technical solutions and priorities 

Software Development and Systems Engineering 

• Professional software development experience, preferably including Golang, with other languages also welcome. Experience in developing custom controllers and APIs is a strong advantage 

• Familiar with open source community engagement and ideally experience with contributing code upstream 

• Deep technical expertise with solid foundational knowledge of Linux and systems engineering 

• Extensive professional experience designing, deploying, and managing cloud infrastructure using the Kubernetes ecosystem 

• Strong understanding of virtualisation and containerisation technologies 

Cloud & Cloud-Native Technologies 

• Comprehensive knowledge of cloud-native offerings from major cloud vendors (AWS, GCP, Azure) for compute, storage, and networking 

• Experience automating cloud infrastructure via APIs and infrastructure-as-code practices 

• Deep understanding of CNCF ecosystem and cloud-native architecture patterns 

• Familiarity with best practices for building CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure automation, including unit testing, integration testing, and staged rollouts 

• Experience working with open source IaaS and CNCF products and tooling at enterprise scale 

Networking & Security 

• Strong understanding of networking technologies and protocols including load balancing, application gateways, TLS encryption and key management, DNS, access controls, and proxy configuration 

• Familiarity with infrastructure security best practices and tooling, including encryption, hardening, RBAC design, vulnerability management, and patching strategies 

Innovation & Continuous Improvement 

• Curious and enthusiastic about developments in CNCF, cloud-native, and infrastructure domains 

• Demonstrated commitment to continuous improvement of technical skills 

• Deep understanding of how AI technologies can be used to improve infrastructure automation 

• Innovative approach to using and exploring AI technologies and tooling 

• Awareness of rapid industry developments in AI technology 

Collaboration & Influence

• Highly collaborative working style with ability to build strong relationships across technical leadership 

• Proven ability to foster collaboration and innovation across organisational boundaries 

• Skilled in anticipating opportunities and challenges through effective stakeholder engagement 

• Enthusiastic and passionate about delivering scalable, self-service, resilient cloud infrastructure 

• Collaboration & Influence 

 

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, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or nationality, ancestry, age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, 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 [email protected] 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. 

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