Sr. Dir., Architecture and Technology

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

ServiceNow is seeking a high-energy, high-EQ executive leader who thrives in a highly cross-functional, rapid-velocity environment and has a passion for driving scale, transforming culture, and designing end-to-end technology solutions for customers and employees who serve our customers. Our value drivers are to:

• Wow customers and employees with digital experiences they cannot live without.
• Create unified, innovative experiences that empower people to feel effective and valued—by bringing together a connected design, a product mindset, and innovative technology.
• Deliver delightful employee experiences powered by Gen AI that accelerate ServiceNow’s journey to become the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century, co-creating, using, and highlighting our own products to do it.

As the Sr. Director, Solutions Architecture, you will lead a global team of Solutions Architects, work closely with product managers, engineers, and business leaders to define the architecture, technology stack, and integration points for enterprise systems, applications, and platforms. You will work across the Connected Customer Experience (CCX) organization and Enterprise Architecture teams to design the overall solution and technical architecture for SNU, Developer ecosystem, Support, and Success organizations to enable the best-connected experience for our customers.

Responsibilities

Solution Design & Architectural Governance

• Own solution architecture across the CCX domain—including integration architecture, data flows, platform-native patterns, and microservices design.
• Produce architecture decision records (ADRs) that document not just what was decided, but what was rejected and why. Every significant design decision should be traceable.
• Lead design reviews and technical assessments with clear criteria—pass/fail should be apparent before the review, not after.
• Surface systemic risks before they reach production. Bottlenecks and failure modes belong in your architecture artifacts, not in incident retrospectives.
• Partner with Enterprise Strategy to consume roadmap direction and feed back implementation-level constraints that affect strategic planning.

M&A Integration

• Understand the footprint of the CCX platform and lead integrations end-to-end, from evaluation and assessment to production.

Vendor Evaluation & POC Leadership

• Lead proof of concept (POC) initiatives when the business needs to validate a vendor or test a new capability, from scoping through recommendation.
• Define POC scope documents before any vendor engagement begins, including: business hypothesis being tested, success criteria with measurable thresholds, constraints (time, cost, integration boundaries), and explicit exclusions.
• Design POCs that test the assumption most likely to fail—not the vendor's best-case demo scenario.
• Produce vendor evaluation outputs that are decision-ready: structured comparison against criteria, risk assessment per option, and a clear recommendation with rationale.
• Maintain an evaluation framework your team can reuse—so each successive POC builds institutional knowledge rather than starting from scratch.
• Ensure POC documentation is complete enough that a team member who was not involved can understand what was tested, what was found, and what was decided.

Cross-Functional Execution & Stakeholder Influence

• Drive alignment between solution design and business requirements across product managers, engineers, and business leaders.
• Translate complex technical decisions into business-framed options for senior stakeholders—choice architectures with tradeoffs, not technology summaries.
• Evaluate and recommend technology stacks, vendor solutions, and integration strategies with quantified risk and cost assessments.
• Maintain a working partnership with Enterprise Strategy—surfacing implementation constraints early enough to shape their planning, not after commitments are made.

Requirements

Required Experience

• 14+ years in solutions architecture, enterprise architecture, or technical leadership—including hands-on solution design and delivery, not just oversight.
• 7+ years leading architecture or engineering teams in large-scale, cross-functional environments ($5B+ revenue companies).
• Demonstrated experience delivering solution architecture artifacts that directly shaped build/buy/configure decisions or platform investments—with traceable outcomes.
• Experience leading structured vendor evaluations and POCs—including writing POC scope documents, defining measurable success criteria, and producing decision-ready recommendations.
• Deep fluency in integration architecture patterns, data flow modeling, microservices design, and platform-native solution development.
• Familiarity with data governance and privacy requirements (GDPR, CCPA, or equivalent) as architectural constraints—not just compliance considerations.
• Experience designing and shipping commercial or enterprise SaaS/PaaS applications—including platform decisions that affected product roadmap.
• Demonstrated experience leading AI or Gen AI transformation within a technical practice—not just deploying AI tools, but changing how the team designs and delivers.
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML integration in enterprise systems—you have architected systems that use AI, not just described how AI could be used. You understand where AI creates leverage and where it introduces risk.
• Experience with ServiceNow platform architecture and products.
• Experience leading architecture in Agile delivery environments—including maintaining architectural integrity under sprint-cycle pressure.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

Executive Leadership Capabilities

• Strategic problem framing: You define problems before proposing solutions. When given a business challenge, your first move is to reframe it at the right level of abstraction—not jump to technology.
• Quantified risk articulation: You express architectural risk in business terms: cost of delay, probability of failure, revenue impact. "This is a high-risk approach" is not sufficient.
• Executive communication under pressure: You can defend architectural decisions to skeptical senior executives without becoming defensive or deferential. You change positions based on logic, not authority.
• AI transformation leadership: You have a theory of change for how AI reshapes solution architecture. You can articulate what the team needs to stop doing as clearly as what it needs to start doing.

Pay

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $254,500 - $380,000, 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. Compensation is based on the geographic location in which the role is located and is subject to change based on 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.