Sr. Dir., Architecture and Technology, Santa Clara

Company Description

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. And we're just getting started.

Join us to put AI to work for people.

Job Description

Sr. Director, Solutions Architecture & Technology

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 are serving 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.

Who We Are

ServiceNow’s technology makes the world work for everyone, and our people make it possible. We move fast because the world cannot wait, and we innovate in ways no one else can for our customers and communities.

We know that your best work happens when you live your best life and share your unique talents, so we do everything we can to make that possible. We dream big together, supporting each other to make our individual and collective dreams come true. The future is ours, and it starts with you.

The Organization

We are not yesterday’s IT department, we're Digital Technology. The world around us keeps changing and so do we. We’re redefining what it means to be IT with a mindset centered on product design, transformation, stellar experiences, AI-driven automation, innovation, and growth. We’re all about delivering delightful, secure customer and employee experiences that accelerate ServiceNow’s journey to become the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century.

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.

What you Will Own

Solution Design & Architectural Governance

Your team's core output is solution architecture that engineering teams can execute and executives can confidently fund. This requires more than design fluency — it requires defensible decision-making with business consequences attached:

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 — not subjective feedback. 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 E2E, from evaluation, assessment to production

Vendor Evaluation & POC Leadership

When the business needs to validate a vendor or test a new capability, your team leads the proof of concept — from scoping through recommendation. This is one of the highest-leverage activities this role owns, and it requires rigor that vendor sales cycles are designed to undermine:

Define POC scope documents before any vendor engagement begins. Scope must include: 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. If a capability cannot be validated under realistic conditions, the POC has not done its job.

Produce vendor evaluation outputs that are decision-ready: structured comparison against criteria, risk assessment per option, and a clear recommendation with rationale. 'It depends' is not an output.

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

Solutions architecture sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and business leadership. You regularly influence without authority — and your credibility depends on the quality of your team's outputs:

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 — not technology summaries, but choice architectures with tradeoffs.

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.

Qualifications

What We're Looking For

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

Beyond experience, we are looking for specific thinking and leadership patterns that are harder to develop:

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.

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. We also offer health plans, including flexible spending accounts, a 401(k) Plan with company match, ESPP, matching donations, a flexible time away plan and family leave programs. Compensation is based on the geographic location in which the role is located and is subject to change based on work location.

Additional Information

Work Personas

We approach our distributed world of work with flexibility and trust. Work personas (flexible, remote, or required in office) are categories that are assigned to ServiceNow employees depending on the nature of their work and their assigned work location. Learn more here. To determine eligibility for a work persona, ServiceNow may confirm the distance between your primary residence and the closest ServiceNow office using a third-party service.

Equal Opportunity Employer

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. In addition, all qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with legal requirements.

Accommodations

We strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, or are unable to use this online application and need an alternative method to apply, please contact [email protected] for assistance.

Export Control Regulations

For positions requiring access to controlled technology subject to export control regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR), ServiceNow may be required to obtain export control approval from government authorities for certain individuals. All employment is contingent upon ServiceNow obtaining any export license or other approval that may be required by relevant export control authorities.