Sr Staff Software Engineer (Java/Go, Kubernetes)
Job Description
Workflow Data Fabric (WDF) connects the ServiceNow AI Platform to enterprise data wherever it lives - querying it in place, streaming it in real time, and ingesting it at scale so workflows and AI agents act on trusted, current data. We are looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to be a senior technical leader across the WDF platform organization. You will set architecture direction across multiple scrum teams, stay hands-on in the code, and own the hardest performance, scalability, and reliability problems across our data-access and data-movement products. Zero Copy Connectors and Remote Process Sync are the anchor areas for this role, with cross-team technical leadership spanning Data Fabric, Trino-based connectors, Stream Connect, ETL/Import Sets, Analytics Ingestion, and data quality.
What You'll Do
• Own end-to-end architecture for Zero Copy Connectors: the federated query path from the ServiceNow platform through a Trino-based query engine to external warehouses and lakehouses (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift, Oracle, Iceberg), including pushdown, connection pooling, caching, authentication, and connector-framework extensibility as the connector portfolio scales.
• Own the technical direction of Remote Process Sync, our instance-to-instance process synchronization framework, driving throughput, parallel processing, ordering guarantees, resiliency, and supportability for high-volume customer and product integrations.
• Drive the architecture of Private Connectivity (Reverse Tunnel), which gives the platform secure, outbound-initiated access to customer data sources behind firewalls. The work covers mTLS tunneling, SNI-based routing, stream multiplexing, and the scale, resiliency, and security needed for enterprise and regulated customers.
• Provide cross-team technical leadership across the WDF portfolio – Data Fabric tables, Trino data connectors, Stream Connect (Kafka), ETL and Import Sets, analytics ingestion pipelines, and native data quality – ensuring coherent designs, shared frameworks, and consistent security and governance patterns.
• Lead architecture and design reviews; write and approve technical specifications; make and document build-vs-buy, protocol, and platform trade-offs with long-term maintainability in mind.
• Write production code in critical paths, prototype new approaches, and review code across teams to raise the engineering bar.
• Define and drive performance and scalability strategy: benchmarks, capacity models, and end-to-end performance validation for query, sync, streaming, and ingestion workloads before release.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for complex production and customer issues; drive root-cause analysis and turn recurring issues into durable platform fixes, observability, and runbooks.
• Partner with Product Management, Engineering Managers, Quality Engineering, Support, and adjacent platform teams (query engine, security, cloud infrastructure) to shape roadmaps, sequence technical investments, and de-risk delivery commitments.
• Mentor and grow senior and staff engineers; build technical depth and knowledge continuity so that critical areas are never dependent on a single person.
Requirements
Department: Engineering, Infrastructure and Operations
Function: Engineering
Experience Level: Not Applicable