{"id":2342298,"url":"https://alion.io/job/servicenow-principal-software-engineer-12","title":"Principal Software Engineer","company":{"id":97,"name":"ServiceNow","domain":"servicenow.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/servicenow","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"SmartRecruiters","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":33,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":18,"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Santa Clara, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":221200,"max":387100,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":387100},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":12,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"ServiceNow","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-16T02:37:23Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-16","last_verified_at":"2026-10-20T17:43:59Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":34,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":34},"description":"It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for everyone-freeing people from busywork so they could focus on meaningful work. Today, ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our ServiceNow AI platform brings together any AI, any data, and any workflow- helping 85% of the Fortune 500® work smarter, faster, and better. We're building an AI-native culture where technology and talent are unstoppable together. And we're just getting started.\nJoin us to put AI to work for people.\nAbout the Team\nWe are looking for an experienced Principal Software Engineer to own the end-to-end architecture of the platform that manages how our customers are licensed, metered, and billed for their subscriptions. This platform is the system of record for customer entitlements, usage measurement, overage calculation, and invoicing across the customer lifecycle - spanning finance, sales, engineering, and customer-facing experience.\nAt our scale, this is fundamentally a distributed systems problem: metering usage in real time across an evolving catalog of consumption-based and subscription pricing models, with strict requirements for accuracy, auditability, and low-latency processing. You will be the technical anchor ensuring these systems, owned across many interconnected teams, work coherently as one platform.\nWhat you get to do in this role:\nDefine and drive the technical vision and end-to-end architecture for the entitlement, usage metering, overage, and billing platform\nDefine and maintain the data model and integration contracts across finance, sales/CRM, engineering, and customer-facing portals - and resolve cross-system risks such as data consistency, latency, and ownership gaps before they surface as production or billing issues\nDesign for correctness under business-calendar constraints - billing cycles, dispute SLAs, and reconciliation windows\nOwn production reliability for the platform - participate in on-call, guide root-cause analysis, and resolve systemic issues rather than applying one-off patches\nShape billing and metering strategy for AI-driven products - including token-based consumption, agentic workflows, and MCP-based agent actions\nGuide teams through complex technical decisions and design reviews, establishing architecture standards for changes that touch the shared platform, and mentor senior/staff engineers on system design and cross-team tradeoffs\nPartner with Product, Finance, Sales Operations, and Engineering leadership to align platform roadmap with business needs \n To be successful in this role you have:\n12+ years of engineering experience (or equivalent depth), with significant time in distributed systems architecture\nSolid backend development experience in Java, Python, Go or equivalent, used in production at scale.\nDomain expertise in billing, licensing, or metering systems, with working knowledge of how these translate across finance, sales, and engineering\nExcellent fundamentals in distributed systems - consistency, fault tolerance, idempotency, exactly-once processing, and stream/batch data pipelines, including high-volume telemetry and event ingestion\nSolid fundamentals in databases and data modelling - schema design, performance tuning, and trade-offs across OLTP/OLAP stores\nWorking knowledge of Kubernetes and container orchestration - deployment topologies, scaling and resource management, and operating stateful services in production\nProven experience architecting systems that span multiple teams/orgs with independent ownership boundaries\nProven experience architecting systems that span multiple teams/orgs with clearly defined ownership boundaries\nExcellent hands-on engineering ability - comfortable prototyping, validating architectural decisions through code, and contributing directly on critical-path components\nAbility to operate as a Principal IC by leading through technical credibility, collaboration, and influence rather than formal authority\nNice to Have\nExperience with enterprise SaaS licensing or subscription-management platforms\nExperience with usage-based billing integrations\nExperience designing or evolving pricing/metering models for AI, agentic, or MCP-based products\nFamiliarity with M&A technical integration - bringing acquired products' usage/billing data into an existing platform\nFor positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $221,200 - $387,100, 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.\n Work Personas\nWe 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.\nEqual Opportunity Employer\nServiceNow 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.\nAccommodations\nWe 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  for assistance.\nExport Control Regulations\nFor 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.\nFrom Fortune. ©2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All rights reserved. Used under license.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6990,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":12,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"All levels","optional":false}]},"benefits":["Equity","Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Workflow & Process Automation (RPA, BPM)","IT Service & Asset Management","AI Agents","Customer Support & Help Desk Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-12T11:31:54Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 664 · green card filings: 278","filings_12m":664,"filings_prev_12m":942,"green_card_filings_12m":278,"median_offered_wage_usd":163402,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":304}],"liveness":{"score":21,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.461,"p_room":0.45,"age_days":34,"expected_fill_days":18,"reasons":["conf:0","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":387100,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/servicenow-principal-software-engineer-12","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/servicenow-principal-software-engineer-12.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-20T19:59:18Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":23110,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":97},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=97"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fservicenow-principal-software-engineer-12"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fservicenow-principal-software-engineer-12"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fservicenow-principal-software-engineer-12"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/servicenow-principal-software-engineer-12\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fservicenow-principal-software-engineer-12"}]}