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Principal Software Engineer

Element AI

Software Engineering

San Diego, CA, USA

USD 195,700-342,500 / year + Equity

Posted on Oct 28, 2025

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Company Description

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.

Job Description

About the Team:

The Intelligent Workflow Engineering organization is at the core of ServiceNow’s Automation and AI-native Platform vision. We design and deliver the next generation of flow orchestration, automation, and decisioning capabilities that power how enterprises digitize and optimize their work. Our portfolio includes foundational products such as Flow Designer and the Flow Engine, Process Automation Designer, Playbooks, Decision Management, RPA and WebAgent Automations, Process and Task Mining, Notifications, Adoption Services, and Document Management. Together, these form the Automation suite — the backbone of how customers build, run, and scale automations on the Now Platform. We combine deep expertise in workflow execution, AI-driven orchestration, and distributed system design to enable the vision of “Anybody can Automate Anything from Anywhere using the Power of AI”. Our systems are the execution fabric behind billions of transactions daily, integrating AI, analytics, and intelligent decisioning to deliver hyper-scalable, reliable, and data-aware automation experiences for our customers.

The Opportunity: Principal Software Engineer

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help define, architect, and build the next-generation Workflow Automation Engine that powers the Now Platform and help accelerate our vision for Intelligent enterprise automations of the future.

In this hands-on, highly technical leadership role, you will be a key driver in scaling our Flow Engine, orchestration framework, and automation intelligence stack to support complex, AI-native enterprise workloads. You’ll lead cross-functional initiatives that blend workflow automation, agentic AI, and process intelligence, shaping how our customers design and execute automations with simplicity and intelligence. You’ll influence system architecture, performance optimization, and reliability strategies across Flow Designer, Process Automation Designer, Playbooks, and RPA and our other offerings. This is a unique opportunity to operate at the intersection of large-scale backend engineering and applied AI, working with world-class engineers and researchers to push the boundaries of automation. Your work will directly impact how thousands of our customers create, manage, and optimize workflows — making the Now Platform faster, smarter, and more autonomous.

The engineering organization is a dynamic group of builders, thinkers, and problem-solvers dedicated to delivering scalable, AI-powered software products that elevate how organizations work. We value clean architecture, intuitive user experiences, and a culture of continuous improvement. Every engineer here plays a key role in shaping the quality and reliability of our products.

What you get to do in this role:

Design and develop scalable, maintainable, and reusable software components with a strong emphasis on performance and reliability.
Collaborate with product managers to translate requirements into well-architected solutions, owning features from design through delivery
Build intuitive and extensible user experiences using modern UI frameworks, ensuring flexibility for customer-specific needs.
Contribute to the design and implementation of new products and features while enhancing existing product capabilities.
Integrate automated testing into development workflows to ensure consistent quality across releases.
Participate in design and code reviews ensuring best practices in performance, maintainability, and testability.
Develop comprehensive test strategies covering functional, regression, integration and performance aspects
Foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement by sharing best practices in engineering and quality
Promote a culture of engineering craftsmanship, knowledge-sharing, and thoughtful quality practices across the team.

Qualifications

To be successful in this role you have:

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.
15 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 12 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 8 years experience; or equivalent experience.
15 years of experience in software engineering, with a track record of delivering high-quality products.
Proficiency in Python, Java, or similar object-oriented languages.
Experience with modern front-end frameworks such as Angular, React, or Vue.
Strong knowledge of data structures, algorithms, object-oriented design, design patterns, and performance optimization
Familiarity with automated testing frameworks (e.g., JUnit, Selenium, TestNG) and integrating tests into CI/CD pipelines
Understanding software quality principles including reliability, observability, and production readiness.
Ability to troubleshoot complex systems and optimize performance across the stack.
Experience with AI-powered tools or workflows, including validation of datasets, model predictions, and inference consistency.
Comfort with development tools such as IDEs, debuggers, profilers, source control, and Unix-based systems
Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of our core backend and workflow engine frameworks, ensuring they are highly scalable, performant, and resilient across millions of transactions and automation flows.
Drive major initiatives related to the integration of AI, automation, and flow orchestration into our platform’s core engine, enabling next-generation intelligent workflows.
Evaluate, design, and champion distributed systems architectures, messaging frameworks, and data persistence strategies that ensure low-latency, high-throughput performance at enterprise scale.
Mentor and guide engineers across multiple teams, fostering a culture of technical depth, performance-first thinking, and engineering excellence.
Collaborate with product managers, architects, and UI engineers to translate complex workflow and automation requirements into elegant, extensible, and fault-tolerant backend systems.
Champion observability, reliability, and efficiency through strong design principles, metrics-driven performance tuning, and advanced debugging practices.
Build high-quality, clean, modular, and reusable code by enforcing best practices around system design, API contracts, testing, and code reviews.
Work with product owners and AI/automation leads to own features end-to-end — from architectural design and performance modeling to deployment and continuous optimization.
Design and implement backend services that empower customers to build, execute, and monitor complex workflows at scale, while ensuring extensibility and configurability.
Contribute to the design and implementation of new workflow engine features and performance frameworks, while continuously enhancing the scalability and reliability of the existing ecosystem.
Plan, lead, and execute large-scale backend modernization and re-platforming efforts, considering architectural trade-offs, system risks, and long-term maintainability.
You will architect and build core services, orchestration engines, and asynchronous processing frameworks that power the automation and AI fabric of the platform — running both on our infrastructure and across public clouds.
Develop robust backend integrations with other systems and services using REST, gRPC, and event-driven paradigms, ensuring secure, performant, and maintainable interfaces.
Collaborate closely with infrastructure and platform engineering teams to optimize deployment pipelines, runtime performance, and scalability across multi-tenant environments.
Proven experience in building workflow engines, orchestration frameworks, message queues, or event-driven architectures.
Strong background in distributed systems, microservices architecture, and data consistency patterns (CQRS, Saga, eventual consistency, etc.).
Exposure to or collaborating with AI research teams, applied ML systems, or large-scale data platforms is highly desirable.
Deep understanding of scale, performance, and reliability engineering — including load testing, capacity planning, and latency analysis.
Demonstrated track record of innovation — conceptualizing, prototyping, and implementing new ideas that improve platform capabilities or developer productivity.
15 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 12 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 8 years experience; or equivalent experience.
Exposure to or collaborating with AI research teams, applied ML systems, or large-scale data platforms is highly desirable. Ability to bridge engineering and research — translating conceptual AI or automation advances into production-grade, scalable backend systems.
Proficiency in API design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC) and secure service communication patterns.
Strong foundation in asynchronous programming, multi-threading, and non-blocking I/O.
Experience with observability tooling (Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, ELK) and distributed tracing.
Strong understanding of CI/CD, automated testing, and blue-green or canary deployment models.
Proven ability to lead architectural discussions, drive complex technical decisions, and mentor senior engineers.
Experience with AI-native or automation platforms is a strong plus (e.g., ServiceNow Flow Designer, RPA, Task Mining, Process Mining).
Excellent communication skills with a collaborative mindset across cross-functional teams.
Why join us:
Build and deliver high-impact software that powers digital experiences for millions of users.
Collaborate in a culture that values craftsmanship, quality, and innovation.
Work symbiotically with AI and automation tools that enhance engineering excellence and drive product reliability.
Be part of a culture that encourages innovation, continuous learning, and shared success.

JV21

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $195,700 - $342,500, 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.

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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