Principal Security Engineer | Cyber Defense Engineering

About the Role

This is a hands-on engineering and architecture role within Cyber Defense Engineering (CDE), focused on tackling some of the hardest, least-defined problems in cyber defense. You'll protect a platform trusted by thousands of the world's largest enterprises, operating with minimal direction and broad latitude to set the technical agenda.

Responsibilities

• Architect Internal AI Security Strategy: Own the security architecture for internal AI adoption across ServiceNow, including agentic tools, LLMs, copilots, and related automation.
• Drive Execution Excellence: Ensure your architecture and standards result in adopted, production-grade outcomes, holding teams accountable for secure implementation.
• Lead AI Threat Modeling: Threat model complex internal AI surfaces, including compromised agents and emerging attack classes.
• Define AI Governance and Policy: Partner with Legal, Privacy, IT, and Engineering to define safe AI usage and translate policies into scalable controls.
• Partner on Frontier AI Threat Research: Collaborate with ServiceNow's product AI security team to apply emerging research internally and share findings.
• Drive Broader Cyber Defense Initiatives: Apply AI to modernize blue and red team practices, consolidate detection platforms, and tackle unnamed problems.
• Mentor and Raise the Bar: Mentor engineers across CDE and elevate technical standards for cybersecurity challenges.

Qualifications

• Experience integrating AI into work processes, decision-making, or problem-solving, such as using AI tools, automating workflows, or analyzing AI insights.
• 15+ years in security engineering, including security operations, architecture, threat modeling, and design reviews, with recent focus on AI-specific threats (or equivalent experience with education).
• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record of owning complex enterprise-scale system architecture.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction and architect security solutions across multiple domains (e.g., AI security, IAM, endpoint security, detection engineering, incident response).
• Clear communication and a bias toward rapid learning in a fast-evolving field.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science or related field, with specialization in Security or AI/ML, or equivalent exceptional track record.
• Hands-on experience threat modeling and securing modern AI systems (LLMs, agents, RAG pipelines), with platform-level impact.
• Deep experience with agentic AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph).
• Built or open-sourced security tooling/automation for AI systems adopted beyond one team.
• Prior experience setting AI security strategy at a platform or company level.

Pay

For this position, we offer a base pay of $221,200 - $387,100, plus equity (when applicable), variable/incentive compensation, and benefits. Compensation varies based on 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 and family leave programs.