Staff Data Platform Software Engineer (Java, Kafka, Kubernetes)

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.

The Distributed Systems group has teams that provide streaming API for higher-layer applications and/or work to scale our application platforms. Depending on the nature of the data, storage systems include data in motion, such as time-series databases or message bus systems. Our largest customers constantly push the limits of backend storage in terms of data size, IO speed, and concurrent transaction number. Performance, reliability, and scalability are always at the core of our work. 

Our largest customers constantly push the limits of backend storage in terms of data size, IO speed, and concurrent transactions. Performance, reliability, and scalability are always at the core of our work.

What you get to do in this role:

• Help design and build highly innovative interactive high-performing solutions with scalability and quality.
• Help design software that is simple to use to allow customers to extend and customize the functionality to meet their specific needs.
• Build high-quality, clean, scalable, and reusable code by enforcing best practices around software engineering architecture and processes (Code Reviews, Unit testing, etc.)
• Design and develop tools, libraries, and frameworks with long-term platform mindset thinking for high modularity, extensibility, configurability, and maintainability.
• Collaborate with peers and cross team members to understand detailed requirements and own your code from design, implementation, test automation and delivery of high-quality product to our users.
• Help contribute to the design and implementation of new products and features while also enhancing the existing product suite.
• Manage projects with material technical risk at a team level.
• Explore and evaluate new technology and innovation to continuously improve platform capability and functionality

To be successful in the role:

• Experience in leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into work processes, decision-making, or problem-solving. This may include using AI-powered tools, automating workflows, analyzing AI-driven insights, or exploring AI's potential impact on the function or industry.
• Experience in using AI Productivity tools such as Cursor, Windsurf, etc. is a plus or nice to have
• 10+ years of experience with Java or a similar OO language
• Experience building and operating large-scale systems.
• Experience with data structures, algorithms, object-oriented design, design patterns, and performance/scale considerations
• Experience with streaming multiple systems (Kafka, Flink, Pulsar, etc.)
• Experience working with large-scale Kafka deployments.
• Experience working in a DevOps environment.
• Experience with relational databases: Oracle, MySQL, Postgres
• Good knowledge and experience with fundamentals in distributed systems design and development
• Strong fluency with Java programming as well as good understanding of Java memory model and garbage collection
• Experience with JVM performance tuning and optimization as well as experience in diagnosing performance bottlenecks. 
• Working knowledge of concurrency, sockets, networking, operating systems, memory management, runtimes, portability, etc 
• Has the experience and ability to diagnose issues and troubleshoot.  

  

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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