Staff Software Engineer Jobs in Santa Clara, CA
Staff Software Engineer jobs in Santa Clara are concentrated in the Central Expressway corridor, Mission College Boulevard district, and the tech campuses around Great America Parkway, with strong demand in semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, and consumer electronics. Employers hiring right now include ServiceNow, Palo Alto Networks, and Fortinet. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Veza is the pioneer in identity security, purpose-built to answer the fundamental question enterprises face: who can and should take what action on what data. Veza's Access Graph platform maps an organization's entire identity ecosystem across users, groups, roles, policies, permissions, and resources providing deep visibility and control over human, non-human, and agentic identities across SaaS, cloud, on-prem, and custom applications. With over 30 billion access permissions under management, global enterprises including Blackstone, Expedia, and Wynn Resorts trust Veza to manage privileged access monitoring, non-human identity security, access entitlement management, and next-generation identity governance.
Veza is now part of the ServiceNow family, with the acquisition closing in March 2026. The combination brings together Veza's AI-native Access Graph with ServiceNow's AI Control Tower and agentic workflows, enabling organizations to enforce end-to-end identity security rooted in the principle of least privilege across applications, data, cloud environments, and AI agents. For engineers joining Veza today, this means the scale and resources of an enterprise platform company, with the product velocity and mission-driven focus of a security innovator at a pivotal moment in the industry.
Job Description
As the Senior Staff Software Engineer, Performance (Tech Lead), you will own performance, scalability and reliability across Veza's platform and product areas. You will combine deep hands-on engineering with technical leadership — defining performance standards, driving instrumentation and observability, and working across teams to proactively identify and prevent degradation before it impacts customers.
What You’ll Do
- Define performance benchmarks, SLAs, and best practices
- Analyze and optimize services, databases, and infrastructure
- Design and execute load, stress, and scalability tests
- Build observability and monitor performance metrics of production systems
- Partner with teams to influence scalable architecture decisions
- Lead root cause analysis and long-term performance improvements
- Mentor engineers and promote performance ownership across teams
Qualifications
What you bring to the table:
- 12+ years of software engineering experience
- Strong background in performance engineering and scalability
- Experience with distributed systems and microservices
- Proficiency in Golang
- Experience with AWS
- Hands-on with profiling, testing, and monitoring tools
- Strong database and query optimization skills
Nice to Have
- Experience with large-scale SaaS platforms
- Familiarity with Kubernetes and observability tools
- Exposure to security or identity systems
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.
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.
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Find Staff Software Engineer JobsStaff Software Engineer Job Market in Santa Clara
Who's Hiring
- ServiceNow18

- Palo Alto Networks13

- Fortinet8

- d-Matrix6

- NVIDIA5

Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software12
- Cybersecurity6
- Artificial Intelligence5
- Electronics & Hardware2
- Telecommunications1
Staff Software Engineer Jobs in Santa Clara: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a staff software engineer job in Santa Clara?
Focus your search on Santa Clara's dense concentration of semiconductor companies, cloud platform teams, and enterprise software firms along the Central Expressway and Great America Parkway corridors. Candidates with distributed systems, VLSI design, or platform engineering experience tend to stand out. Networking through local tech meetups and targeting companies headquartered in Santa Clara's Mission College and Agnew districts gives you a practical edge over remote applicants.
Which companies hire staff software engineers in Santa Clara?
Companies currently hiring staff software engineers in Santa Clara include ServiceNow, Palo Alto Networks, and Fortinet, per current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Santa Clara's employer base skews heavily toward established semiconductor giants, hyperscale cloud providers, and mid-stage enterprise software companies, making it one of the densest hiring markets for senior individual contributors in the country.
Are there remote staff software engineer jobs in Santa Clara?
Yes, though staff software engineer roles lean toward hybrid given the collaborative, cross-functional nature of the work at this seniority level. About 74% of staff software engineer openings tied to Santa Clara are remote or hybrid as of November 2026, with fully remote positions most common in platform, backend infrastructure, and developer tooling teams rather than hardware-adjacent or on-site lab roles.
How can I get a staff software engineer job in Santa Clara with little or no experience?
The most realistic path into Santa Clara's market at this level is through a senior software engineer role at one of the many mid-size product companies or early-stage startups clustered near the Mercado and Innovation Way areas, then building toward a staff designation internally. Santa Clara employers frequently promote from within, so joining a team as a senior IC and demonstrating system-level ownership is more reliable than applying directly to staff titles with limited experience.
Which industries hire the most staff software engineers in Santa Clara?
Most staff software engineer openings in Santa Clara sit in Technology & Software, Cybersecurity, and Artificial Intelligence, per current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Santa Clara's unique position as home to major semiconductor fabrication, networking hardware, and cloud infrastructure companies means demand for staff-level engineers runs across both software and hardware-adjacent product domains.
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