Principal Security Engineer

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

Role

This is a principal-level security architecture and strategy role with enterprise-wide scope. You will set security direction across ServiceNow’s products and platforms, define the controls and standards that teams build against, and serve as a technical authority on complex and emerging threats, including those introduced by AI and agentic systems. You’ll also drive the use of AI to strengthen security itself, applying it to detection, triage, and security analysis. You’ll partner with security research teams to turn their findings into requirements and roadmap priorities, and represent ServiceNow’s security posture externally and to executive leadership. We’re looking for a deep security or engineering expert; experience with AI security is a plus, not a prerequisite.

What you'll do

• Contribute to the security strategy and reference architecture across the company’s products and platforms
• Lead threat modeling for complex and novel systems, including AI and agentic systems where established patterns don’t yet exist
• Define platform-wide security standards, including access-control and data-boundary models that other teams build against
• Establish what secure-by-design means for new technologies, including AI, and drive adoption across engineering organisations
• Set methodology and priorities for red-teaming and security assessment programs
• Apply AI to strengthen security work, such as detection, triage, vulnerability discovery, and design review
• Make or approve security risk decisions for high-impact initiatives that cross organisational boundaries
• Represent ServiceNow’s security posture to standards bodies, industry forums, and executive leadership
• Develop senior security engineers and shape the team’s technical agenda

Qualifications

To succeed in this role, you’ll need

• To succeed in this role, you'll need
• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science or a related field, or an exceptional record of impact
• Experience that meets one of the qualifying backgrounds below, including design reviews, threat modeling, and risk assessment at enterprise scale
• A sustained record of setting security direction across multiple teams or product lines, with standards, controls, or architecture that others adopted as their baseline
• Recognised depth in at least one core security discipline, such as application, cloud, identity, cryptography, or offensive security, with working breadth across the others
• Expert fluency with threat modelling methodologies (e.g., STRIDE, attack trees) and security frameworks such as the OWASP Top 10, to the point of extending, critiquing, or contributing to them
• A demonstrated ability to ramp quickly on new technology domains and reason about security where no established patterns exist
• A track record of developing principal- and staff-level security leaders, and of shaping decisions with senior executives and engineering leaders
• Clear, precise communication with executive audiences, and a record of influencing outcomes without direct authority

Qualifying background (either path)

• Security-led: 13+ years in security, with at least 3 years in principal-level roles owning architecture, risk, or threat modeling across the organization
• Engineering-led: 13+ years of software engineering, including at least 3 years building or owning security-critical systems such as identity, authorization, data pipelines, distributed systems, or platform security, and a demonstrated move into security ownership at enterprise scale

Bonus

• Depth in AI security, including threat modeling or securing LLM, GenAI, or agentic systems
• Experience with prompt injection and jailbreak defense, guardrail architecture, or AI red-teaming
• Hands-on familiarity with agentic frameworks and protocols such as LangChain, LangGraph, MCP, and A2A
• Experience designing identity and consent models for AI agents
• Built security tooling for AI systems used beyond one team
• CVEs, publications, or invited talks in security research, especially in AI or LLM security
• Prior experience setting AI security strategy at a company or platform level

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, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or nationality, ancestry, age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, 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