Principal Software Engineer - AI Native UX

Company 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.

Join us to put AI to work for people.

 

Job Description

What you'll do:

UX Architecture & Strategy — Define and own the long-term architecture for AI-native user experiences across the platform, making critical build-vs-buy decisions (design systems, agent-to-UI interaction patterns, real-time/streaming UX for AI-generated content) to ensure the experience layer stays resilient and coherent as the platform scales.

AI-Native Intelligent Experiences — Design and build user-facing surfaces where agentic backends - recommendations, autonomous triage, generated fixes/insights, multi-step agent reasoning - are exposed to end users through fast, trustworthy, low-friction interaction patterns. Own the hard UX problems unique to AI-native products: progressive disclosure of agent reasoning, graceful handling of uncertainty/latency, human-in-the-loop review flows, and making autonomous system behavior legible and controllable to end users rather than a black box.

UXC & Workspace Platform — Deep ownership of the UXC (User Experience/Workspace, UI16) surface — component architecture, design system consistency, and performance — as the primary canvas AI-native features are built on top of.

Agentic Pipeline Awareness — Partner closely with platform/ML teams building the agent orchestration and tool-calling infrastructure underneath (multi-agent dispatch, MCP-style tool integration, reasoning traceability) — translating what these backends can do into UX patterns that make them usable, safe, and trustworthy for real users.

Business Alignment — Align UX and technical architecture with business goals, ensuring engineering velocity, experience quality, and adoption of AI-native features directly support customer acquisition, retention, and time-to-market.

Hands-on Engineering — Write high-performance, clean, production-grade code primarily across the frontend/experience stack (Lit.js, React/TypeScript, design systems, component architecture), with working fluency in backend/platform code (Java, Python, Postgres, K8s) to collaborate effectively with platform teams.

Cross-functional Execution — Drive business-critical UX and platform outcomes in close collaboration with ML, backend platform, and product teams.

Engineering Culture — Mentor senior engineers, champion UX and engineering excellence, and foster a culture of rapid, impact-driven innovation in AI-native product development.

Ownership & Initiative — Proactively identify UX and platform gaps in the AI-native experience, propose solutions, align stakeholders, and drive execution with a high degree of ownership.

Qualifications

• Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering and platform work—AI-powered tooling, automated operational workflows, agentic systems for fleet visibility and operations, or reasoning about AI’s impact on how infrastructure is built and run.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated progression into Principal or Sr. Staff Engineer capacity, with a track record concentrated in user experience / frontend platform engineering at a high-growth tech company or top-tier AI lab.
• Deep UXC / AI-native UX expertise - has shipped intelligent, AI-driven user experiences (not just consumed an LLM API), with strong intuition for how agent/model output should surface to real users.
• Hands-on experience with agentic/multi-agent systems from the consumer side — understands agent orchestration, tool-calling protocols (MCP or equivalent), and reasoning traceability well enough to design UX around them, even if platform-layer implementation sits with another team.
• Strong hands-on coding ability with deep design thinking in the frontend/experience stack (React/TypeScript, component/design systems), working proficiency in backend fundamentals (K8s, Java, Python, Postgres) to bridge into platform architecture conversations.
• Demonstrated ability to connect UX and engineering decisions to business outcomes - adoption, retention, time-to-market, not just technical metrics.
• Self-driven with strong ownership, able to identify UX and system gaps, propose solutions, align stakeholders, and execute at startup pace.
• Experience integrating or critically evaluating AI tools/agentic workflows in product and engineering decision-making, particularly from a user-experience and trust/legibility angle.

Good to Have

• Prior experience in distributed systems performance/scalability, even if not the primary focus of recent roles.
• Open-source contributions to major AI-native UX, design-system, or agent-framework projects.
• Prior startup experience working closely with Product and Growth teams in an early-stage environment.

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 law. In 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 globaltalentss@servicenow.com 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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