Senior Staff Data Engineer Jobs
Senior Staff Data Engineer jobs are open across technology, financial services, healthcare, and media, from staff-level to distinguished engineer, with specializations in data platform architecture, streaming pipelines, and analytics infrastructure. Find a role that fits from the openings below and apply directly.
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It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for everyone—freeing people from busywork so they could focus on meaningful work. Today, ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our ServiceNow AI platform brings together any AI, any data, and any workflow— helping 85% of the Fortune 500® work smarter, faster, and better. We're building an AI-native culture where technology and talent are unstoppable together. And we're just getting started.
Join us to put AI to work for people.
Job Description
Position Location
This is a Flexible (Hybrid) position. Flexible positions require 2 days per week in a ServiceNow office location. We have offices in several locations, including San Francisco, CA; Pleasanton, CA; Santa Clara, CA; San Diego, CA; and Kirkland, WA
Please Note
This position will include supporting our US Regulated Markets.
“This position requires passing a ServiceNow background screening, USFedPASS (US Federal Personnel Authorization Screening Standards). This includes a credit check, criminal/misdemeanor check and taking a drug test. Any employment is contingent upon passing the screening. Due to Federal requirements, only US citizens, US naturalized citizens or US Permanent Residents, holding a green card, will be considered.
About the team
As a Senior Staff Software Engineer with the Data Platform organization, you will be responsible for designing and implementing features and services within our cloud-native platform.
What you get to do in this role
- You will design, build, and operate components and services within the cloud-native platform, taking features from design through to production.
- You will lead well-scoped projects within your team, turning requirements and rough ideas into solid technical designs and delivering them.
- You will collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align your work with the platform’s architecture and standards.
- You will contribute to the reliability, scalability, and operability of what you build — writing tests and instrumentation, improving runbooks, and participating in on-call.
- You will spend most of your time hands-on building — operators, controllers, automation, and platform services that other teams depend on.
- You will help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.
Qualifications
To be successful in this role you have
- Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering work — whether using AI-powered coding and operational tooling, automating workflows, or reasoning about how AI changes the way software and infrastructure are built.
- 12+ years of software development experience with a Bachelor's degree; OR 8+ years with a Master's degree; OR 5+ years with a PhD; OR equivalent work experience.
- 5+ years of hands-on experience building, deploying and operating workloads on Kubernetes.
- Working experience with at least one major hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP), including its core compute, networking, and IAM primitives.
- A track record of delivering complex features or services as a key contributor.
- Solid working knowledge of containers, CI/CD and GitOps-based delivery, and infrastructure-as-code.
- Strong programming skills in Go (or another systems language with a willingness to work primarily in Go).
It also helps if you have:
- Experience building Kubernetes controllers or working with the operator pattern.
- Familiarity with container networking (CNI) or service mesh.
- Experience with workload identity, mTLS, or secrets management.
- Experience with observability — metrics, tracing, and dashboards.
For positions in this location, we offer a base pay from $181,200 , 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, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, gender identity, 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 globaltalentss@servicenow.com 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.
From Fortune. ©2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All rights reserved. Used under license.
It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for everyone—freeing people from busywork so they could focus on meaningful work. Today, ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our ServiceNow AI platform brings together any AI, any data, and any workflow— helping 85% of the Fortune 500® work smarter, faster, and better. We're building an AI-native culture where technology and talent are unstoppable together. And we're just getting started.
Join us to put AI to work for people.
Job Description
Position Location
This is a Flexible (Hybrid) position. Flexible positions require 2 days per week in a ServiceNow office location. We have offices in several locations, including San Francisco, CA; Pleasanton, CA; Santa Clara, CA; San Diego, CA; and Kirkland, WA
Please Note
This position will include supporting our US Regulated Markets.
“This position requires passing a ServiceNow background screening, USFedPASS (US Federal Personnel Authorization Screening Standards). This includes a credit check, criminal/misdemeanor check and taking a drug test. Any employment is contingent upon passing the screening. Due to Federal requirements, only US citizens, US naturalized citizens or US Permanent Residents, holding a green card, will be considered.
About the team
As a Senior Staff Software Engineer with the Data Platform organization, you will be responsible for designing and implementing features and services within our cloud-native platform.
What you get to do in this role
- You will design, build, and operate components and services within the cloud-native platform, taking features from design through to production.
- You will lead well-scoped projects within your team, turning requirements and rough ideas into solid technical designs and delivering them.
- You will collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align your work with the platform’s architecture and standards.
- You will contribute to the reliability, scalability, and operability of what you build — writing tests and instrumentation, improving runbooks, and participating in on-call.
- You will spend most of your time hands-on building — operators, controllers, automation, and platform services that other teams depend on.
- You will help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.
Qualifications
To be successful in this role you have
- Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering work — whether using AI-powered coding and operational tooling, automating workflows, or reasoning about how AI changes the way software and infrastructure are built.
- 12+ years of software development experience with a Bachelor's degree; OR 8+ years with a Master's degree; OR 5+ years with a PhD; OR equivalent work experience.
- 5+ years of hands-on experience building, deploying and operating workloads on Kubernetes.
- Working experience with at least one major hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP), including its core compute, networking, and IAM primitives.
- A track record of delivering complex features or services as a key contributor.
- Solid working knowledge of containers, CI/CD and GitOps-based delivery, and infrastructure-as-code.
- Strong programming skills in Go (or another systems language with a willingness to work primarily in Go).
It also helps if you have:
- Experience building Kubernetes controllers or working with the operator pattern.
- Familiarity with container networking (CNI) or service mesh.
- Experience with workload identity, mTLS, or secrets management.
- Experience with observability — metrics, tracing, and dashboards.
For positions in this location, we offer a base pay from $181,200 , 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, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, gender identity, 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 globaltalentss@servicenow.com 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.
From Fortune. ©2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All rights reserved. Used under license.
Senior Staff Data Engineer Jobs by Experience Level
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Find JobsSenior Staff Data Engineer Job Market
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Hospitality & Tourism
- Healthcare & Medical Services
- Investment & Asset Management
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in senior staff data engineer jobs.
- 8 or more years of experience building and maintaining large-scale data pipelines
- Deep proficiency with distributed processing frameworks such as Apache Spark or Flink
- Experience designing data platform architecture including lakes, warehouses, and mesh patterns
- Fluency in Python or Scala alongside SQL for transformation and orchestration work
- Hands-on experience with cloud data services on AWS, GCP, or Azure
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical design reviews and mentor senior engineers
Tips for Your Senior Staff Data Engineer Job Search
Quantify pipeline scale on your resume
Hiring managers at the senior staff level care about scope. Replace vague claims with concrete throughput numbers, data volumes, and latency improvements your systems achieved. A resume that names terabyte-scale ingestion or sub-second SLA wins beats one that lists tools alone.
Highlight cross-functional design decisions
Senior staff roles are judged on influence, not just execution. Call out moments when you shaped data contracts with upstream engineering teams, drove schema standards org-wide, or resolved competing platform priorities. That cross-team impact is what separates staff from senior engineers in screening.
Target companies by data maturity stage
A senior staff data engineer at a Series B startup owns different problems than one at a Fortune 500. Filter openings by company size and funding stage to find environments where your strengths, whether greenfield builds or scaling legacy systems, are the actual job.
Apply early to roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists senior staff data engineer openings from across the United States in one place, so you can find roles that match and apply directly to each listing.
Prepare a system design narrative not a slide deck
Panels for senior staff data engineers almost always include a whiteboard or live design session. Practice walking through a distributed pipeline decision end-to-end: data sources, transformation logic, storage trade-offs, and failure modes. Interviewers want to see how you reason, not just what you built.
Negotiate scope before negotiating title
At the senior staff level, the real negotiation is often around technical scope, team structure, or platform ownership, not just compensation. Before accepting, clarify what systems you will own, whether the role has a reporting path, and what the first six-month mandate actually is.
Senior Staff Data Engineer Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies are hiring the most senior staff data engineers?
The companies hiring the most senior staff data engineers right now include ServiceNow, Google, and Intuit, with the largest share of openings in California, Texas, and Virginia, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Demand is concentrated in technology, financial services, and healthcare, though openings appear across a wide range of industries.
How many senior staff data engineer jobs are remote?
About 87% of senior staff data engineer openings are fully remote or hybrid as of November 2026, reflecting the distributed nature of modern data platform work. Roles focused on cloud-native infrastructure, streaming pipeline development, and analytics engineering tend to have the highest remote availability compared to positions requiring close collaboration with on-site data science or ML teams.
How do you become a senior staff data engineer?
Reaching the senior staff level typically requires building production data systems at meaningful scale, taking ownership of platform-wide decisions, and demonstrating impact beyond your immediate team. Most engineers get there by leading migrations or re-architecture projects, establishing data standards adopted by other teams, and consistently mentoring senior engineers. A strong foundation in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and data modeling underpins all of it.
Can you land a senior staff data engineer role with limited direct experience at that level?
It is possible if you can demonstrate staff-level impact even without the title. Hiring managers look for evidence that you have owned large technical decisions, influenced engineering direction across teams, and shipped systems others depend on. A portfolio of cross-functional projects, open-source contributions to data tooling, or a clear record of technical leadership in a senior engineer role can substitute for a prior staff-level title.
What does the senior staff data engineer interview process look like?
Most processes run three to five rounds. Expect an initial recruiter or hiring manager screen, followed by a technical coding assessment focused on data manipulation or pipeline logic, a system design session where you architect a distributed data solution end-to-end, and a behavioral round assessing cross-functional leadership and influence. Some companies add a presentation round where you walk through a past project at the architecture level.
Where can I find and apply to senior staff data engineer jobs?
You can find and apply to senior staff data engineer jobs on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from across the United States. Search the listings to find roles that match your experience and specialization, then apply directly to each one that fits.
See All 36 Senior Staff Data Engineer Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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