Principal Engineer - Data Platform

Employees can work remotely Team Join the Global Cloud Services (GCS) organization's platform engineering team, which is building ServiceNow's next-generation data foundation on the modern stack: Trino for distributed queries, dbt for transformations, Iceberg for lakehouse architecture, and Argo Workflows for orchestration. At the center of that effort is the GCS Data Warehouse, the modern lakehouse that will replace the organization's existing Cloudera-based data platform and serve as the substrate every GCS data consumer is built upon. Role As Principal Engineer for Data Platform Modernization, you will be the foundational architect for the GCS Data Warehouse and everything upstream of the query layer: how data lands, how it is transformed, and how it is served as correct, well-governed tables on the lakehouse. You will own the target architecture and lead the program that moves ServiceNow's Global Cloud Services data off Cloudera (Impala, Hive, HDFS, Hive Metastore) onto the modern lakehouse (Trino, Iceberg, dbt, a modern catalog). The estate is real: hundreds of tables and pipelines feeding dozens of downstream consumers, with years of accumulated history, spread today across on-premises, virtualized, and cloud clusters in multiple regions. Your job is to design the new foundation, stand up the ingestion and transformation layers that feed it, and move those workloads onto it with verified correctness and zero data loss at petabyte scale. The platform runs in the public cloud, and it must operate across both commercial and regulated environments. ServiceNow's regulated footprint includes government and other controlled enclaves with their own isolation, data-residency, and compliance requirements, so this is not a single-account, single-region system. You will design one portable architecture that deploys independently into each boundary, commercial and regulated alike, carrying the right isolation, access control, and audit posture into each. Getting that portability right is one of the hardest and most defining parts of the role. This is a one-year program with a clear end state: Cloudera decommissioned, so the organization does not renew it. There is a concrete cost and consolidation mandate behind that deadline, and it shapes every decision. You will make the high-leverage architectural calls fast, sequence the work so the platform is proven incrementally rather than in one high-risk cutover, and keep it moving at pace. This is a hands-on technical leadership role, not a management role. You will define the architecture, set the correctness and quality bar, make the hardest technical decisions, and keep the platform coherent as it scales. You will not manage people; you will lead through architecture, deep technical judgment, and influence, partnering closely with the engineers building alongside you and with Engineering and GCS leadership. This is a unique opportunity to define the data foundation for all of Global Cloud Services at ServiceNow's scale, and to do it at startup velocity within a Fortune 500 environment. What you get to do in this role Design the GCS Data Warehouse, the modern lakehouse foundation (Trino, Iceberg, dbt, a modern catalog) that replaces the existing Cloudera-based platform and serves as the substrate for GCS data consumers. Lead the one-year program to move GCS data off Cloudera (Impala, Hive, HDFS, Hive Metastore) so the organization can decommission it rather than renew, sequencing the work as a phased, low-risk path with each workload verified on the new foundation before the old one is retired. Design one portable architecture that deploys independently into commercial and regulated environments, with the isolation, data-residency, access-control, and audit posture each boundary requires. Treat operating across those boundaries as first-class architecture, not a later hardening step. Own the ingestion architecture: change data capture from the primary source systems, transactional Postg