Senior Staff Database Engineer

Postgres, MySQL
UNITED STATES
October 20, 2026
Full Time
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Job Description

Company: ServiceNow
Location: Santa Clara, CA
Workplace Type: Hybrid
Employment Type: Full-time
Pay / Compensation: $165,500 – $289,600, plus equity, variable/incentive compensation, and benefits

About the Role

ServiceNow is seeking a Senior Staff Database Engineer to join our SWAT (Software Action Team) ensuring the production stability of customer applications and infrastructure services. In this role, you will be the ultimate escalation point for internal and external customers, supporting infrastructure by learning the platform from end to end and chasing down complex issues in large-scale distributed systems under real-world load. Please note: This role includes on-call rotation responsibilities.

What You’ll Do / Key Responsibilities

  • Production Troubleshooting: Become an SME in production database troubleshooting, ServiceNow instance performance, and Linux performance analysis across both on-prem and Hyperscaler environments.
  • Incident Root Cause Analysis: Own complex incident root cause analysis across multi-tenant PostgreSQL/MariaDB fleets at scale.
  • Observability & Automation: Develop observability tooling and automation to prevent the recurrence of critical issues.
  • Infrastructure Influence: Influence infrastructure decisions that shape our multi-tenant cloud platform.
  • Mentorship: Mentor and collaborate with engineers across operations, support, and development.

Requirements & Qualifications

  • 12+ years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 8+ years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 5+ years of experience; or equivalent experience in database engineering in large-scale, enterprise environments with a database-focused background.
  • Deep PostgreSQL expertise including MVCC, transaction management, vacuum mechanics, WAL architecture, advanced query performance tuning, buffer management, and backup/restore.
  • Experience supporting large-scale, multi-tenant SaaS, PaaS, or cloud infrastructure platforms.
  • Strong Unix/Linux skills including file system navigation, permissions, process management, and performance diagnostics, with a deep understanding of RedHat Linux internals.
  • Experience with public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Strong problem-solving ability, logical thinking, and curiosity to understand complex systems end-to-end.

Preferred / Bonus Qualifications (if applicable)

  • Experience with the ServiceNow platform, scripting, tuning, and troubleshooting.
  • Scripting proficiency: shell, Python, JavaScript, Ansible.
  • Experience with schemas, replication, indexing, and query optimization techniques.
  • Familiarity with Kubernetes and CI/CD pipelines.

Benefits & Perks (if applicable)

  • Comprehensive health plans, including flexible spending accounts.
  • 401(k) Plan with company match.
  • Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).
  • Matching donations.
  • Flexible time away plan and family leave programs.

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.

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