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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 Team Bio:
ServiceNow’s Applied AI Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team is where bold ideas meet transformative action. We partner with our most strategic customers to shape the future of enterprise AI. Together, we identify high-value opportunities, accelerate business outcomes, and build reusable AI-native solutions that advance the Now AI Platform.
Our mission: We partner deeply with our customers to build intelligent, scalable AI solutions that solve their most mission-critical challenges. By embedding in real-world complexity, we deliver fast, iterate with purpose, and transform every success into reusable patterns that accelerate transformation across the Now Platform and the broader enterprise.
Why This Role Matters:
Enterprise leaders aren’t just experimenting with AI—they’re demanding outcomes. The next wave of adoption will be led by those who can move fast, deliver measurable value, and transform 1-off wins into repeatable success.
As a FDE Technical Program Manager, you operate on the frontlines of transformation. You will support ServiceNow’s cross-functional Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) teams in building and delivering intelligent, scalable AI solutions that solve our customers’ most mission-critical challenges.
You'll work in a fast-paced environment as our FDE team partners with key strategic customers to accelerate time to value. You will provide a proactive, strategic perspective, manage customer relationships, and drive tactical execution from initial conception through FDE build development, delivery, and successful completion.
Who You Are:
You are a dynamic and innovative problem-solver who thrives in complex, fast-paced environments. You have a strong analytical mindset while still keeping focus on the bigger picture. You have a background managing SDLC processes while keeping a customer-first mentality. You have a passion for AI and scaling innovation. You excel at transforming ambiguity into clarity and have hands on experience driving projects/programs end to end.
What You’ll Do:
- Work seamlessly with software engineers, product managers, product designers, and customers, to deliver intelligent systems that address mission-critical challenges using AI.
- Collaborate directly with customers to co-innovate AI solutions tailored to their needs, acting as the first point of contact or escalation.
- Develop trusted relationships with key internal and external technology leaders and stakeholders to drive focus on the strategic build objectives and optimize build delivery - this includes supporting and holding resources accountable for their responsibilities within the build.
- Drive large scale, cross-functional, high visibility AI software development builds on condensed timelines.
- Organize complex, ambiguous problems into prioritized milestones, deliverables, and success criteria for your builds, translating business objectives into execution strategy (tactical and strategic).
- Anticipate and remove obstacles that slow down or prevent builds from delivering on objectives, especially on the AI/ML deployment front.
- Help manage risks, dependencies and escalate impediments, as well as releases and navigating AI release requirements.
- Drive process improvements and create documentation to promote best practices using automation to replace repeatable, operational tasks.
- Coordinate day to day activities required to deliver a great solution on time, as well as create transparency through reports, dashboards, and status updates.
- Seek to continuously grow by proactively seeking and embracing constructive feedback, as well as provide feedback to colleagues to encourage an open and collaborative culture .
Qualifications
- 8+ years of project/program management experience in mid/large size software development companies.
- A solid understanding of SDLC and release management practices in cloud-based SaaS product organizations.
- Prior work delivering AI or intelligent workflow solutions at scale, with proven success in deploying AI solutions that delivered tangible customer impact.
- Familiarity with AI governance, compliance, and enterprise security practices
- This role includes occasional travel.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Demonstrated competence in key AI/ML software engineering program management best practices: program planning, schedule construction and management; risk assessment & mitigation, dependency management, change management, and predictive metrics.
- Outstanding collaboration and communication skills - clearly communicate changes, requests, and deadlines to the teams and risks, status, progress, and decisions to a variety of audiences including executives.
- Passion for working with people in technical and innovative environments, with the ability to work well with many different types of personalities in various functions.
- Strong leadership and relationship building skills to influence and motivate without authority - masterful in the art of bringing people together.
- Strong facilitation skills to lead/drive a variety of build events, with a high regard for quality, drive for continuous improvement across the organization, and ability to keep the big picture in view.
- Experience deploying AI solutions to production and skilled at identifying waste/delays in AI end-to-end development, deployment, and release processes.
- Exceptional team building and team management skills, including interpersonal skills, conflict resolution, and negotiation.
- Experience in leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into work processes, decision-making, or problem-solving.
For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $166,500 - $291,400, 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.
From Fortune. ©2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All rights reserved. Used under license.
Salary Context
This $166K-$291K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $178K across 1623 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 9,079 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At ServiceNow, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills in Demand for This Role
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $211,950 based on 13,048 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200. This role's midpoint ($228K) sits 8% above the category median. Disclosed range: $166K to $291K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($256,000) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $111,000; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $229,300; Director: $272,300; VP: $235,830.
ServiceNow AI Hiring
ServiceNow has 21 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, AI Product Manager, AI Agent Developer. Positions span Dallas, TX, US, San Diego, CA, US, New York, NY, US. Compensation range: $158K - $394K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 6% (531 positions) offer remote work, while 8,478 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (3,078 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,646 roles, $261,000 median); Los Angeles (1,486 roles, $210,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 9,079 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 106 entry-level, 4,384 mid-level, 3,343 senior, and 1,246 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (531 positions). The remaining 8,478 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($256,000 median, 66 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 457 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 55 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 9,079 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,862), AI Product Manager (453), AI Software Engineer (451). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (106) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,384) and senior (3,343) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,246 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (531 positions), with 8,478 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,000. Top-quartile roles start at $263,911, and the 90th percentile reaches $318,400. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $256,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $141,440. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,649 postings), Aws (898 postings), Azure (723 postings), Rag (671 postings), Gcp (536 postings), Pytorch (434 postings), Claude (410 postings), Kubernetes (406 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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