Staff Software Engineer, Platform Cryptography 

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.

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Team

Platform Security builds foundational security infrastructure and AI-driven detection systems for enterprise-scale operations. Our mission is to make security proactive, intelligent, and seamlessly integrated into the ServiceNow platform. Cryptography within Platform Security owns the cryptographic backbone of the ServiceNow platform across multiple domains: certificate lifecycle, key management, secrets distribution, and workload identity for a SaaS platform. This is core, regulated-environment security engineering

Role Summary

As a Staff AI Security & Crypto Engineer, you will architect and deliver enterprise-scale security solutions that integrate cryptographic systems with machine learning, reasoning engines, and real-time inference. You will bring deep expertise in applied cryptography, strong technical leadership, and hands-on machine learning depth — designing and operating intelligent, adaptive security systems for key management, PKI, and secrets infrastructure at SaaS scale.

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $166,500 - $291,400 , 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.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain high-quality, scalable, secure cryptographic services meeting FIPS compliance and regulated-environment requirements; Architect and operate mission-critical crypto services with reliability and security as first-class design constraints; Own services end-to-end on Kubernetes in a multi-tenant SaaS environment - deployment, scaling, on-call, incident response; Bring a security mindset to every design review: threat model the feature, not just the happy path — this is a deliberate area we're leveling up as a team; Evaluate where AI/ML has a legitimate role in the crypto/security space — anomaly detection in key usage, ML-assisted certificate lifecycle risk scoring, AI-assisted code review for cryptographic anti-patterns — and separate that from where it's a distraction; Collaborate with product owners, security architects, and platform teams to translate compliance and security requirements into working cryptographic frameworks; Mentor engineers on secure coding, cryptographic pitfalls, and design review rigor; Stay current on cryptographic advancements, including post-quantum readiness, and bring that forward before it's a compliance deadline

Requirements

8+ years of experience in professional software engineering experience, Java, Go, or a comparable strongly-typed language at production scale; Strong CS fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, OO design, distributed systems tradeoffs; Production experience running services on Kubernetes (deployments, Helm, CI/CD) in a SaaS/multi-tenant environment — this is assumed, not a differentiator; Working understanding of core cryptographic primitives (symmetric/asymmetric encryption, hashing, digital signatures, TLS/PKI fundamentals); Demonstrated security-first engineering habits: secure coding practices, threat modeling, code review discipline

Nice to have

Direct experience in cryptography, PKI, key management, or secrets management — certificate lifecycle systems, HSM/KMS integration, or crypto-agility work; Some hands-on AI/ML exposure — not a research background, but real experience applying ML techniques to security/ops problems (anomaly detection, risk scoring, log/telemetry analysis) or critically integrating LLM tooling into engineering workflows; Experience with regulated environments (FIPS 140-2/3, FedRAMP, common criteria, or similar); Exposure to post-quantum cryptography; Track record mentoring engineers and raising the security bar on a team, not just shipping features