Senior Manager, Software Engineering Management
- Location
- San Diego, CA
- Employment
- Full Time
- Work model
- On-Site
- Level
- Senior
- H-1B history
- 185 approvals (FY2023)
- Posted
Skills
About this role
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
The team: Workflow Automation, Intelligence & Mining We build the workflow and automation engines that power how work gets done across the ServiceNow Platform. Our engines process billions of workflow transactions every month across enterprise customers, and we’re now extending that foundation to support AI-native, agentic workflows. As Senior Manager, Software Engineering, you lead that team. You lead people, own delivery outcomes, and set operating standards, working on some of the highest-stakes problems in the org. This is a hands-on leadership role. Close enough to the work to go deep with an engineer on a hard production issue, senior enough to own the trajectory of the whole team. What you get to do in this role Lead, coach, and grow the team, including Staff, Sr, and Jr-level ICs, owning hiring, ramp, performance, and career development, and building the bench that carries the org forward. Own delivery outcomes across your part of the platform, from major architecture initiatives and releases to the production escalations where depth and experience matter most. Serve as the senior escalation owner for critical production issues, running path-to-green plans and coordinating resolution across engineering, product, and support. Set and uphold the engineering standard for your team, define what great looks like, and back your engineers when they hold the line on it. Champion shared architecture patterns, tooling, and documentation as force multipliers, and cleared the path for the team to build and maintain them. Report delivery status, platform health, and program signal to executive stakeholders, with a clear read on trajectory and what is needed to unblock. Partner with product and engineering leadership to close the feedback loop from the platform back into the roadmap and technical strategy. What we’re looking for 8+ years in software engineering or technical leadership, with 3+ years managing engineers, ideally including senior, staff, or principal-level ICs. A track record of leading complex platform initiatives and high-stakes releases to production, and turning around at-risk, high-visibility work. Enough technical depth to be credible with Principal and Staff engineers on architecture, system design, and troubleshooting. Experience building or integrating AI and GenAI into production systems, including agents, LLM-based workflows, or agentic automation. A bias for standards over shortcuts, and the judgment to know when a gate applies, when it doesn’t, and how to hold that call across a team. Proven ability to build the operating machinery of an engineering team: standards, rubrics, staffing models, and reusable patterns that raise consistency. Strong stakeholder management across product, engineering leadership, and cross-functional partners. The instinct to lead through others, raising the level of the engineers around you through direct coaching, not just by example. Why this role You’d own the team building the core of our workflow and automation engines, the people, and the standard behind every release. You’d work closely with the Principal engineers to shape where this platform