Staff AI Engineer: Foundational AI Services

ServiceNow is seeking a visionary Staff AI Engineer to lead the architecture and scaling of its core AI intelligence layer. This role involves building the foundational AI services, essentially an "AI Operating System," to empower product teams in deploying production-grade GenAI. The engineer will own the end-to-end lifecycle of internal AI infrastructure, focusing on high-performance, resilient, and autonomous systems beyond simple wrappers. This is a high-impact role setting the standard for AI development and scaling across the company's ecosystem.

Must Have

• Lead domain-specific model optimization using PEFT (LoRA/QLoRA) and knowledge distillation.
• Build next-gen Retrieval-Augmented Generation pipelines using hybrid search, cross-encoders, and self-correcting retrieval loops.
• Design and deploy multi-agent systems using frameworks like LangGraph or CrewAI, enabling autonomous task planning and tool-use (Function Calling).
• Build "LLM-as-a-judge" frameworks and robust eval pipelines to measure hallucination rates, groundedness, and safety.
• Implement high-throughput, low-latency serving strategies including quantization, speculative decoding, and prompt caching.
• 8+ years of overall software engineering experience.
• Expert-level mastery of Transformers, attention mechanisms, and the latest frontier models (GPT-4o, Claude 3.5, Llama 3).
• Deep experience with vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus), orchestration layers (LangChain, LlamaIndex), and MLOps tools.
• Staff-level coding proficiency in Python/Rust, understanding distributed systems, concurrency, and API design.
• Familiarity with Chain-of-Thought (CoT), DSPy, GraphRAG, and Semantic Caching.

Company Description

It all started in sunny San Diego, California in 2004 when a visionary engineer, Fred Luddy, saw the potential to transform how we work. Fast forward to today — ServiceNow stands as a global market leader, bringing innovative AI-enhanced technology to over 8,100 customers, including 85% of the Fortune 500®. Our intelligent cloud-based platform seamlessly connects people, systems, and processes to empower organizations to find smarter, faster, and better ways to work. But this is just the beginning of our journey. Join us as we pursue our purpose to make the world work better for everyone.

Job Description

Staff AI Engineer: Foundational AI Services

We are looking for a visionary Staff AI Engineer to architect and scale our core AI intelligence layer. In this role, you won't just be building features; you will be building the "AI Operating System" for our company—the foundational services that empower every product team to deploy production-grade GenAI.

The Mission

As a Staff Engineer, you will own the end-to-end lifecycle of our internal AI infrastructure, moving beyond simple wrappers to create high-performance, resilient, and autonomous systems.

Key Responsibilities

• LLM Fine-Tuning & Distillation: Lead domain-specific model optimization using PEFT (LoRA/QLoRA) and knowledge distillation to balance cost, latency, and reasoning capability.
• Architect Foundational RAG: Build next-gen Retrieval-Augmented Generation pipelines using hybrid search, cross-encoders, and self-correcting retrieval loops.
• Agentic Orchestration: Design and deploy multi-agent systems using frameworks like LangGraph or CrewAI, enabling autonomous task planning and tool-use (Function Calling).
• Enterprise-Grade Evaluation: Build "LLM-as-a-judge" frameworks and robust eval pipelines to measure hallucination rates, groundedness, and safety.
• Inference Optimization: Implement high-throughput, low-latency serving strategies including quantization, speculative decoding, and prompt caching.

Why Join Us?

You will be the technical lead for a mission-critical team, setting the standard for how AI is built and scaled. This is a high-impact role where your architecture will directly influence the intelligence of our entire ecosystem.

Qualifications

To be successful in this role you have:

• Typically requires 8+ years of overall software engineering experience.
• Core AI: Expert-level mastery of Transformers, attention mechanisms, and the latest frontier models (GPT-4o, Claude 3.5, Llama 3).
• The Stack: Deep experience with vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus), orchestration layers (LangChain, LlamaIndex), and MLOps tools.
• Software Craft: You are a Staff-level coder in Python/Rust who understands distributed systems, concurrency, and API design.
• Modern Buzz: You live and breathe Chain-of-Thought (CoT), DSPy, GraphRAG, and Semantic Caching.

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, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or nationality, ancestry, age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, 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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