Senior Staff Data Platform Engineer Kafka Apache Iceberg Apache Spark

Position Location:
This is a Flexible (Hybrid) position.  Flexible positions require 2 days per week in a ServiceNow office location.  We have offices in several locations including San Francisco CA; Pleasanton CA; Santa Clara CA; San Diego CA

Team Overview

The Data Platform group builds highly scalable highperformance platform capabilities for datainmotion and backend storage systems. Our customers operate at massive scale pushing the boundaries of data volume throughput and concurrency. We are looking for a seasoned IC5 Senior Staff Engineer with deep expertise in distributed systems data ingestion pipelines and Data Lake architectures to drive nextgeneration platform innovation.

Role Summary

As an IC5 Senior Staff Engineer you will architect and deliver largescale distributed platform components lead complex technical initiatives and define engineering best practices. You will bring strong leadership hands-on engineering depth and the ability to design and operate reliable scalable and highperformance data systems.

What you get to do in this role:

• Architect design and build highperformance distributed systems and platform components.
• Build distributed systems data ingestion solutions with strong emphasis on scalability quality and operational excellence.
• Design software that is easy to use extend and customize for customerspecific environments.
• Deliver highquality clean modular and reusable code while enforcing engineering best practices (code reviews unit testing automation design reviews).
• Build foundational libraries frameworks and tools focused on modularity extensibility configurability and maintainability.
• Collaborate across engineering teams to refine requirements and deliver endtoend solutions.
• Provide technical leadership for projects with significant complexity and risk.
• Research evaluate and adopt new technologies that enhance platform capabilities.
• Troubleshoot and diagnose complex production issues across distributed systems.

Qualifications :

To be successful in this role you have:

• Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering work whether using AI-powered coding and operational tooling automating workflows or reasoning about how AI changes the way software and infrastructure are built.
• 10 years of software development experience with a Bachelors degree; OR 8 years with a Masters degree; OR 6 years with a PhD OR equivalent work experience.

Core Distributed Systems Expertise

• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems architecture design patterns and algorithms.
• Deep programming expertise in Java including JVM internals memory models and garbage collection.
• Proven experience in JVM performance tuning profiling and diagnosing performance bottlenecks.
• Strong understanding of concurrency networking sockets OS internals and performance optimization.
• Hands-on experience building and operating largescale distributed systems.
• Experience with relational databases such as Oracle MySQL or PostgreSQL.

Streaming & Messaging Systems

• Experience with largescale deployments of Kafka or similar streaming platforms.
• Deep knowledge of stream processing topic design partitioning replication and HA strategies.
• Experience working within DevOps environments for operationalizing distributed platforms.
• Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering fullstack Data Lake solutions.
• Strong expertise in designing and operating data ingestion pipelines using:
• • Apache Iceberg (tables catalogs schema evolution metadata management)
  • Kafka Connect (source/sink connectors distributed mode)
  • Apache Kafka (highscale clusters topic/partition strategies HA)
  • Apache Flink (stateful stream processing exactlyonce semantics)
  • Apache Spark (batch & streaming jobs optimization partitioning)
• Expertise in data formats such as Parquet ORC and Avro along with compaction and governance strategies.
• Ability to build scalable faulttolerant ingestion and transformation workflows.
• Experience integrating Data Lakes with analytics engines query services or ML platforms.

For positions in this location we offer a base pay of $181200 - $317100 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.

Equal Opportunity Employer

ServiceNow 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 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 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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Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time