Staff Research Scientist

About the role

As a Staff Researcher, you will work on research questions that most AI labs simply do not have access to. ServiceNow AI Research is chartered to build the future of enterprise agentic AI, from a rare vantage point: we see how agents actually behave, inside complex enterprise environments, at scale.

You will contribute to research initiatives on how agents accumulate and reuse tacit knowledge, learn and improve continuously, and on their resilience, their safety, and the privacy of the data they handle. These are the real obstacles to enterprise agentic deployment today, and they surface in operational reality well before they appear in the literature.

While much of the AI and NLP community concentrates on core agent capabilities, our team explores the dimensions that determine real adoption: safety mechanisms, threat detection, privacy guarantees, and responsible AI practices. You will have the freedom to publish and advance the state of the art, with the rare advantage of testing your hypotheses against real deployments rather than against benchmarks.

Pay and benefits

PhD in computer science, machine learning, or a related field, or equivalent research experience 2 or more years of research experience post-PhD, a significant portion of it in an industrial setting or in direct contact with deployed systems Established publication record at top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, or equivalents), with contributions recognized as influential in your field Demonstrated track record of setting/executing research agenda, not only executing one: you have chosen problems before the community turned to them, and you can explain why Experience working on cross-disciplinary teams or projects collaborating with researchers and engineers Strong software development skills: you write, maintain, and optimize high-quality research code, and you know what it takes for a result to survive the move into production Advanced use of agentic tools in your own research practice, and a willingness to advance the team's practices in this area Demonstrated ability to influence technical decisions beyond your own team, particularly with product and engineering teams Excellent communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical work to non-specialist audiences and to executives Nice to have Expertise in one or more of the following areas: agent memory and tacit knowledge, continual learning, safety and alignment, security and threat detection, privacy, agent evaluation Experience with AI systems operating in real enterprise environments, with the compliance, governance, and scale constraints that entails Contributions to open source software, datasets, or evaluation benchmarks used by the community Scientific service roles: program committees, editorial work, workshop organization Academic collaborations or supervision of doctoral students For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $202,500 - $354,400, 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.

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