Senior Staff Data Engineer Jobs in California

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.

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The ServiceNow Security Organization (SSO)

The ServiceNow Security Organization (SSO) delivers world-class, innovative security solutions to reduce risk and protect the company and our customers. We enable our customers to migrate their most sensitive data and workloads to the cloud, accelerating our business so that we are the most trusted SaaS provider. We create an environment where our employees are proud to work and can make a positive impact

About the role

Our security teams pull data from a lot of separate systems. Asset inventory, identity governance, detection tooling, and threat intel all live in different places, so answering a basic question like which systems an attacker could reach from a compromised account can take a security analyst most of a day.

We're building a platform that connects those systems behind a shared API and knowledge layer so those questions can be answered in seconds. We are not replacing the source systems or copying their data.

You would be a senior individual contributor on a small team, responsible for whole areas of the platform: designing the API contracts, building the services behind them, getting them into production, and working with partner teams to actually adopt them.

This is a hands-on role. You will write code, define interfaces other teams build against, and work directly with stakeholders in detection engineering, red team, blue team, and identity and asset management.

What you'll do

• Design and build the platform's core APIs, covering context retrieval, risk scoring, entity resolution, data contracts, and coverage queries.
• Build and run asynchronous data pipelines on a message bus with a governed schema registry.
• Integrate security data sources including SIEM, identity governance, asset inventory, and our knowledge graph.
• Own platform workstreams from scoping through delivery, including the cross-team coordination that takes.
• Write design proposals and review other people's, as part of the platform's RFC process.
• Review code, mentor engineers on partner teams who contribute to the platform, and keep the technical documentation usable.

Required qualifications

• 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.
• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, including systems you have operated in production and not just shipped. OR SIMILAR EXPERIENCE WITH EDUCATION
• Expert-level Python: data processing at scale, API development, and real testing discipline in a production codebase.
• Deep hands-on Splunk experience. SPL, data onboarding and normalization, search performance tuning, and working with the Splunk APIs.
• Software architecture ownership on distributed or data-intensive systems. You have defined service and API boundaries, documented the tradeoffs, and revised a design when the requirements moved.
• A real cybersecurity background: security operations, detection engineering, threat detection, incident response, or security data engineering. You should know how security telemetry gets produced and consumed, and be comfortable with frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK.
• Project ownership at a senior IC level. You have taken an initiative from a vague problem statement to a delivered result, worked across team boundaries to do it, and kept engineering leadership informed without needing to be managed through it.

Beneficial qualifications

• Data science experience: statistical analysis, feature engineering, anomaly detection, or building and evaluating models against noisy operational data.
• Applied AI or ML experience, particularly LLM-based systems, retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge graphs, or agentic workflows, along with some interest in the security side of enterprise AI adoption.
• Experience with identity governance or asset inventory platforms.
• Experience defining data contracts or governance models for internal platform consumers.

First year

By the end of your first year you own one or more of the platform's core APIs, partner teams are building against contracts you wrote, and you are one of the people whose opinion carries weight in architecture and design discussions for the program.

#SecurityJobs

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $190,900 - $334,100, 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.

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.

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