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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Principal Data Platform Software Engineer - Distributed Systems - Kubernetes - **Company:** ServiceNow - **Location:** Santa Clara, CA, United States - **Salary:** $240,100.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Cloud Engineering, Data Infrastructure, Distributed Systems, Identity and Access Management, Google Cloud, Istio, Delivery Pipeline, Multi-Cloud, Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Servicenow - **Published:** September 17, 2026 - **Apply:** https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/ServiceNow/744000150459669-principal-data-platform-software-engineer-distributed-systems-kubernetes ## About the Role * Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering and platform work - whether using AI-powered tooling, automating operational workflows, building agentic systems for fleet visibility and operations, or reasoning about AI's impact on how infrastructure is built and run. * 15+ years of experience with a Bachelor degree or 12+ years with a Masters degree, designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production, with deep expertise running Kubernetes at scale (multi-cluster, multi-region, multi-tenant). * Hands-on, authoritative experience across one or more major hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP), including their managed Kubernetes offerings (EKS, AKS, GKE) and the networking, IAM, and capacity tradeoffs that come with each. * A proven track record of providing technical leadership across multiple engineering teams, influencing architecture and direction without relying on positional authority. * Deep expertise in the core building blocks of a modern platform: the operator/controller pattern, infrastructure-as-code and control planes (e.g., Crossplane), GitOps-based delivery, container networking (CNI), and service mesh. * Strong programming skills in Go and fluency across the cloud-native ecosystem., * Experience designing identity and trust fabrics for distributed systems - workload identity, mTLS, and standards such as SPIFFE/SPIRE. * Experience with multi-tenant workload isolation and runtime security (e.g., Kata Containers, sandboxed runtimes). * Experience building and operating platforms for regulated or federal markets (FedRAMP, air-gapped or self-hosted distribution, OCI bundling). * Experience with observability at scale - metrics, tracing, and SLO-driven operations across a large fleet. * A platform-as-product mindset: treating internal engineering teams as customers and the platform as a product with a roadmap, contracts, and a delivery pipeline. ## Description * As a Principal Engineer, you will help to set the technical direction for our cloud-native platform across multiple engineering teams and organizations. You will be part of a team defining the architecture and standards for how Kubernetes, distributed systems, and hyperscaler infrastructure are built and operated at scale. * You will assist in solving the hardest, most ambiguous technical problems in the platform domain - multi-cloud topology, control-plane design, workload isolation, identity and trust fabric, and reliability at the scale of hundreds of clusters and dozens of product workloads. * You will work with a team of principal engineers and engineering fellows, and other senior technical leaders to help drive consistent architectural decisions and the adoption of best practices across the entire platform ecosystem. * You will assist in identifying and mitigating the biggest technical risks in initiatives with C-suite visibility. * You will help mentor staff and senior engineers and shape the next generation of the organization's technical leadership., 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. ## Related Videos - [Shipping Faster with Less: Render on Cloud Hosting, AI Workloads, and the Future of DevOps](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1894-shipping-faster-with-less-render-on-cloud-hosting-ai-workloads-and-the-future-of-devops) - [Applying Agile Principles to Incident Management ](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/101-applying-agile-principles-to-incident-management) - [Understanding Kubernetes in a visual way](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100085-understanding-kubernetes-in-a-visual-way) - [Rate-limiting using eBPF and Istio: How to protect your SaaS customers from themselves](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100220-rate-limiting-using-ebpf-and-istio-how-to-protect-your-saas-customers-from-themselves) - [Platform Engineering untold truths: is just an infrastructure matter?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1220-platform-engineering-untold-truths-is-just-an-infrastructure-matter) - [AI in Production: applied AI & enterprise use cases](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100130-ai-in-production-applied-ai-enterprise-use-cases) ## Related Articles - [Highest Paying Tech Companies for Developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/220-highest-paying-tech-companies-for-developers) - [How We Built a Worry-Free System That Runs for 10+ Years – And What We’d Do Again](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/751-how-we-built-a-worry-free-system-that-runs-for-10-years-and-what-we-d-do-again) - [Navigating the AI Shift](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/629-navigating-the-ai-shift) - [Best US AI Conferences for CTOs in 2026: Build vs. Buy, Vendor Evaluation, and Peer Intelligence](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/736-best-us-ai-conferences-for-ctos-in-2026-build-vs-buy-vendor-evaluation-and-peer-intelligence) - [Stephan Gillich - Bringing AI Everywhere](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/489-stephan-gillich-bringing-ai-everywhere) - [MLOps And AI Driven Development](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/82-mlops-and-ai-driven-development)