Director - Database Performance Engineering

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.

About the role

The successful candidate will lead the Database Performance Engineering organization responsible for driving performance, scalability, efficiency, and customer experience across ServiceNow's database platforms and supporting infrastructure. This leader will build, develop, and scale high-performing engineering teams focused on database performance, operating system performance, scalability engineering, performance testing, benchmarking, observability, capacity planning, workload optimization, and automation.

Responsibilities

• Lead talent acquisition, performance management, career development, succession planning, objective setting, coaching, and prioritization of strategic initiatives.
• Establish a strong engineering-first culture centered on data-driven decision making, continuous improvement, performance excellence, and operational efficiency.
• Identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks across database services, operating systems, compute, storage, infrastructure, and distributed application environments.
• Ensure the platform can scale to support future business and customer growth.
• Partner closely with Product Engineering, Database Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, Architecture, and Operations teams to incorporate performance and scalability considerations throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Serve as the senior technical leader for complex performance investigations, customer-critical escalation engagements, migration readiness assessments, and platform scalability initiatives.
• Transform operational insights into long-term engineering improvements.
• Influence architectural decisions and technology investments by providing performance expertise, scalability guidance, and production-based insights.
• Establish scalable performance engineering practices, standards, testing methodologies, and governance processes across the organization.
• Drive adoption of performance testing and benchmarking frameworks, workload characterization methodologies, capacity planning models, observability standards, scalability assessments, and performance engineering best practices.
• Continuously evaluate database, operating system, infrastructure, and application performance trends, identify systemic bottlenecks, and implement engineering improvements.
• Establish meaningful KPIs and engineering metrics for platform performance, workload growth, resource utilization, infrastructure efficiency, scalability risks, customer experience, and organizational effectiveness.
• Leverage AI-powered tools, analytics, automation frameworks, and production intelligence to accelerate performance analysis, identify emerging bottlenecks, optimize resource utilization, and improve engineering productivity.
• Use performance testing results, production telemetry, customer escalations, and capacity forecasts to drive architectural improvements, migration readiness, scalability investments, and long-term platform evolution.
• Champion a proactive performance engineering model that shifts the organization from reactive troubleshooting to predictive analysis, prevention, and continuous optimization.

Requirements

• Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into work processes, decision-making, or problem-solving.
• 15+ years of experience in database engineering, performance engineering, distributed systems, or large-scale SaaS platform operations.
• 8+ years of engineering leadership experience, including leading managers and globally distributed teams.
• Extensive experience leading Performance Engineering, Database Engineering, Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, or related technical organizations.
• Deep expertise in database technologies, operating system performance, distributed systems, and cloud-native architectures.
• Strong understanding of query optimization, workload management, execution planning, indexing strategies, capacity planning, scalability engineering, and performance analysis.
• Experience designing and executing large-scale performance testing, benchmarking, workload simulation, and capacity modeling programs.
• Strong understanding of performance tuning across database, operating system, storage, network, and application layers.
• Proven experience identifying and resolving complex performance bottlenecks in large-scale distributed environments.
• Experience leading customer-critical investigations involving performance, scalability, efficiency, and capacity-related challenges.
• Strong experience leveraging observability and telemetry platforms to analyze system behavior and drive performance improvements.
• Experience partnering with software engineering organizations to improve platform performance, scalability, efficiency, and production readiness.
• Experience driving engineering initiatives through data, metrics, benchmarking, and measurable business outcomes.
• Exceptional communication, stakeholder management, and leadership skills.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Skills

• Experience operating large-scale enterprise database platforms supporting mission-critical workloads.
• Experience building and scaling Database Performance Engineering, Scalability Engineering, or Performance Architecture organizations.
• Experience with performance testing, benchmarking, workload simulation, capacity forecasting, and migration validation frameworks.
• Experience leveraging AI technologies to improve performance analysis, anomaly detection, workload forecasting, and engineering productivity.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems architecture, cloud platform operations, and hyperscale environments.
• Experience developing executive-facing performance scorecards, engineering metrics, and business impact reporting.
• Experience influencing platform architecture, database strategy, and long-term scalability roadmaps.
• Experience with observability, telemetry, monitoring, and advanced performance analytics platforms.
• Experience with Linux-based production environments and large-scale cloud infrastructure.
• Demonstrated success leading strategic performance optimization initiatives and complex cross-functional engineering programs.
• Experience supporting enterprise database technologies such as MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, or cloud-native database platforms.
• Familiarity with ServiceNow platform architecture and large-scale SaaS operations.

Pay

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $221,200 - $387,100, 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.

Benefits

• 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.