Principal Data Platform Software Engineer (Database Operations)

Role Overview

As a Principal Data Platform Software Engineer, you take part in architecting solutions for operating RaptorDB at scale. You will take part in setting technical directions for database deployment strategies, lead cross functional design sessions and establish best practices across teams. This role combines hands-on engineering excellence with technical leadership, bridging on-premise technologies, cloud-native architecture, infrastructure automation, and operational resilience.

What you get to do in this role

• Participate in architecting and designing solutions for RaptorDB deployment, operations, and resilience across ServiceNow's hybrid infrastructure (datacenters and public cloud providers).
• Collaborate across organizational boundaries to evolve backup, restore, replication, and failover systems that integrate with broader database reliability and scalability efforts across the platform.
• Drive adoption of cloud-native technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Cloud-Native PostgreSQL) and establish reference architectures that balance operational simplicity with business requirements.
• Develop high-quality, clean, and maintainable code that enforces best practices in software architecture, automated testing, code reviews, and deployment pipelines.
• Collaborate with Architects across teams, RaptorDB development, infrastructure automation, systems engineering, and security teams to ensure database operations are secure, performant, and resilient across all environments.
• Lead performance analysis and optimization initiatives, including backup and restore times, recovery time objectives (RTO), and resource utilization across the fleet.
• Respond to urgent production incidents and provide expert guidance on database operations challenges to customer-facing and internal teams.
• Build and maintain institutional knowledge through documentation, runbooks, and architectural decision records that enable the team to scale.

To be successful in this role you have

• Skilled in applying AI-assisted tools to enhance productivity across design, analytics, and software development while adhering to governance and best practices.
• Experience in working across organizations co-architecting and co-designing holistic solutions.
• Track record of helping with setting technical direction, making architectural decisions under uncertainty in a highly collaborative environment.
• Deep expertise with databases, including operations, operational management and backup/restore strategies.
• Experience designing and building distributed systems, with strong understanding of high-availability, failover, and disaster recovery architectures.
• Exceptional communication skills; ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both engineering and non-technical audiences.

Qualifications & Requirements

• Experience in leveraging or critical thinking about how to integrate AI into work processes, decision making, or problem solving. This includes using AI powered tools, automated workflows, analyzing AI-driven insights, or reasoning about AI's impact on how infrastructure is built and run.
• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with 8+ years focused on database systems, infrastructure, or cloud platforms.
• Hands-on proficiency with multiple programming languages (Go, Python, or equivalent) and demonstrated mastery of software engineering best practices.
• Experience with Kubernetes and database operators.
• Experience operating databases in cloud environments
• In-depth Linux knowledge
• Excellent technical problem-solving skills
• Background in open-source database is a plus

Pay and benefits

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $240,100 - $420,200, 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.

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.