Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, ServiceNow
$201.3-352.3k
Plus equity (when applicable), ESPP and variable/incentive compensation
Office located in Santa Clara, CA
Cloud-based digital workflows for enterprises
Posted today
Cloud-based digital workflows for enterprises
1001+ employees
Posted today
$201.3-352.3k
Plus equity (when applicable), ESPP and variable/incentive compensation
Office located in Santa Clara, CA
1001+ employees
Company mission
To transform IT to revolutionize the enterprise.
Role
Who you are
- A track record of owning architecture across a large system or multiple teams, with deep experience operating production-quality software
- Hands-on depth in both agentic and LLM systems and probabilistic or ML-driven scoring—graph modeling, calibration, search and optimization, or risk and probability engineering
- Proven zero-to-one at scale: you’ve taken an ambiguous problem to a reliable production system that others depend on
- The judgment to make consequential architecture decisions under uncertainty, and make them defensible to engineers and executives alike
- Command of distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native development, and data or graph systems
- Expert-level Python, and/or Java, Go, or TypeScript
- Technical leadership and mentorship that moves teams through influence
- Applied interest in security problems—attack-path analysis, vulnerability management, identity security, threat intelligence, or detection and response—is strongly preferred
- Experience with AI-assisted development tools and coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or Windsurf is a plus
- Experience with AI evaluation, safety, governance, or policy guardrails is a plus
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including leading the design and delivery of complex production systems
- The primary skills required are Predictive Modeling, Graph ML, Security Analytics, Anomaly Detection, Risk Scoring, LLMs/Agentic AI, and MLOps, which align with advanced machine learning and AI engineering rather than traditional software development
- Demonstrated experience as the technical owner or lead for a major system or across teams
- Depth building AI/ML-powered production systems; probabilistic modeling, graph analytics, or calibration and evaluation is a strong plus
- Modern AI experience: LLMs, RAG, embeddings, vector search, agentic harness and workflows, model evaluation, or AI observability
- Strong programming experience in Python and/or Java, Go, or a similar language
- Cloud-native technologies, distributed systems, APIs, databases, and scalable architectures
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience
- Cybersecurity or security-product experience, or familiarity with modern security architectures and operations, is strongly preferred
What the job involves
- The Security and Risk Engineering organization builds scalable, AI-powered security solutions that reduce risk and protect ServiceNow and its customers. It values AI-first thinking, clean architecture, intuitive experiences, and a culture of continuous learning
- This is a zero-to-one incubation building a new class of exposure analysis that ranks security work by exploitability rather than raw severity. The architecture is evolving, and this role helps define what good looks like
- As a Senior Staff Engineer, you own the architecture of a security harness with a novel exploitability engine end to end, and are accountable for the decisions that shape everything downstream. You set technical direction, make the hard calls defensible, and multiply the engineers around you
- Own the end-to-end architecture of the exploitability engine—from evidence ingestion and entity resolution, through the attack-path probability core and choke-point ranking, to the validation loop that keeps predictions honest
- Own decisions that cascade through the system: calibrated probability versus ordinal rank, identity as a first-class graph edge, assume-breach seeding, and how the most critical assets are defined
- Own the probabilistic ranking core: edge-traversal probability, guided path search with hop and likelihood limits, correlated-control-failure modeling, and honest uncertainty bands
- Own the calibration and validation loop—canaries, purple-team and incident replay, calibration measured by zone and vector—that turns modeled weights into evidence rather than opinion
- Make make-or-break metrics first-class engineering targets, starting with entity-resolution accuracy and calibration quality
- Extend the existing portfolio rather than rebuilding it, knowing precisely what to reuse and what must be net-new
- Lead zero-to-one work at production scale: turn an ambiguous, novel problem into a reliable system other teams build on, and set the bar where no precedent exists
- Drive technical direction across architecture, design, and code reviews, and raise the engineering bar across the incubation
- Mentor senior engineers and lead by influence, not title
- Partner with product, security R&D, and SecOps to turn customer problems into architecture, and translate that architecture into decisions leaders can act on
- Establish AI safety, security, governance, and guardrails for agentic systems running in production
Our take
ServiceNow provides cloud-based solutions that define, structure, manage, and automate services for enterprise operations, transforming old, manual ways of working into modern digital workflows. The company was founded in 2004 with a vision to build a cloud-based platform that would enable regular people to route work effectively through the enterprise.
Much as Salesforce enables a company to manage its external clients by keeping a record of all contacts and interactions, ServiceNow promises an internal system to meet the needs of employees. It has succeeded in claiming half the market, setting itself apart from legacy IT service-management software players like BMC Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cherwell Software and CA Technologies.
The company's success comes from two product traits: simplicity and customisability. ServiceNow's IT tools don't require the IT department to set them up. Once running, they offer a single collection centre for requests, data points and checklists, all of which can in turn be analysed by algorithms to predict needs, flag concerns and measure efficiency.
The company has more than 7,700 customers, including 85% of the Fortune 500 list of the United States' largest corporations. ServiceNow now looks to increase its revenue threefold in the upcoming years and has entered into a 5-year partnership plan with Visa, beginning with the launch of a Visa-integrated dispute resolution solution for issuers. The company is prioritising organic growth over mergers and acquisitions, with a target revenue of $15B, something which its Visa partnership will no doubt aid in achieving.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
16% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Mar 2012
$11m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Feb 2012
$17.9m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Total funding: $83.8m
Company benefits
- Generous family leave
- Matched donations
- Annual learning stipends
- Flexible PTO
- Competitive retirement plan
- Paid volunteer time
Company HQ
Santa Clara, CA
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