Senior Manager - Machine Learning Engineering

What you get to do in this role

We are looking for a Senior Manager of Machine Learning Engineering to lead a team building the next generation of AI Search and Retrieval capabilities that power intelligent experiences across the ServiceNow platform including Conversational and Agentic experiences.

You will lead engineers and machine learning practitioners responsible for designing and delivering highly scalable search, retrieval, ranking, recommendation, and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems that enable users to discover information, generate insights, and accomplish work more effectively.

• This leader will collaborate closely with Product Management, Applied AI, Platform Engineering, UX, and Quality Engineering to define strategy, execute roadmap commitments, and deliver AI-powered experiences that serve millions of users globally.
• You will play a critical role in advancing the technologies powering ServiceNow AI Search, Knowledge Retrieval, and GenAI experiences, while building a high-performing engineering culture focused on innovation, quality, and business impact.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of software engineers and machine learning engineers building large-scale AI Search and retrieval systems.
• Drive the strategy, architecture, and execution for Search, Ranking, Relevance, Personalization, and RAG capabilities.
• Partner with Product Managers and architects to define and deliver innovative AI-powered experiences.
• Build scalable retrieval pipelines leveraging vector search, semantic search, ranking models, and large language models.
• Improve relevance, precision, recall, and overall search quality across structured and unstructured enterprise content.
• Establish architectural patterns for highly available, resilient, and performant distributed systems.
• Lead the development and production deployment of machine learning models and retrieval services at enterprise scale.
• Drive operational excellence, reliability, observability, and performance optimization across the platform.
• Mentor engineering leaders and individual contributors while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and technical excellence.
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to evaluate emerging AI technologies and accelerate their adoption into customer-facing products.
• Balance short-term delivery goals with long-term technical investments and platform evolution.

To be successful in this role you have

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with a Bachelor's degree, or 10+ years with a Master's degree, or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of engineering management experience leading high-performing technical teams.
• Strong expertise in Java or Python and large-scale distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience with Search technologies such as Lucene, Elasticsearch, Solr, OpenSearch, Algolia, Coveo, Glean, or similar platforms.
• Experience building and operating large-scale retrieval, ranking, recommendation, or search systems.
• Experience with modern AI/ML technologies, including LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, and RAG architectures.
• Strong understanding of information retrieval, search relevance, ranking algorithms, and semantic search.
• Experience deploying and operating machine learning models in production environments.
• Knowledge of cloud-native architectures, microservices, observability, and performance optimization.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills with the ability to influence across engineering and product organizations.
• Proven track record of delivering innovative products from concept through production at enterprise scale.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building enterprise search, knowledge retrieval, or GenAI products.
• Experience with personalization, recommendation systems, or relevance optimization.
• Experience working with vector search technologies and embedding frameworks.
• Experience leading geographically distributed engineering teams.
• Experience integrating AI capabilities into customer-facing SaaS products.

Why this role is exciting

• Own a critical part of ServiceNow's AI platform strategy.
• Influence how millions of users discover knowledge and interact with AI-powered experiences.
• Lead a team at the intersection of Search, Machine Learning, and Agentic platform.
• Partner with world-class engineers, researchers, and product leaders.
• Help shape the future of AI-driven enterprise productivity.

Pay and benefits

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $190,900 - $334,100, 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.

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.