Staff Software Engineer - Forecast Engine at ServiceNow
Santa Clara, CA
$166,500–$291,400from the description
Jun 28, 2026
Santa Clara, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This staff-level engineering role centers on building and owning a cloud cost and capacity Forecast Engine — an automated, always-on service that runs deterministic multi-period simulations, tracks forecasts against budgets and actuals, fires alerts on drift or breaches, and translates outputs into hyperscaler capacity reservation recommendations. The work is largely greenfield, extending an existing Rust simulation core with an orchestration and automation layer built on Argo Workflows, Trino, dbt, Iceberg, and Splunk. It suits a senior backend engineer with a background in data-intensive systems, forecasting pipelines, and observability who is comfortable with high-velocity, low-process delivery.
Staff level · 8+ years · Remote · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 2,450 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 710–4,400
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $135,980 (middle half $105,210–$171,980). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (10)
The degree requirement accepts equivalent experience in lieu of any formal degree ('or equivalent experience'), so the degree requirement is set to None.
The 8+ years figure is the stated minimum for candidates with a Bachelor's degree; the JD also accepts 6 years + Master's or 3 years + PhD. 8 is used as the role-level floor per the schema rule of using the minimum of a range.
The systems/backend language requirement names Rust, Go, Java, and C++ as interchangeable options; Rust is listed first and is the language the existing simulation core is written in, so it is the primary skill with the others as alternatives.
Splunk is the primary observability platform named throughout the JD's requirements and hands-on sections; Datadog and Prometheus/Grafana appear as 'or similar' alternatives in the required qualifications.
Argo Workflows is the orchestration system the team owns and the role is explicitly asked to build on; Airflow is named as an 'or similar' alternative in the qualifications.
Trino, dbt, Iceberg, and Lightdash are all listed under the Technical Expertise required section ('Modern data stack: Trino, dbt, Iceberg, Lightdash, or similar') and are also the team's owned stack described throughout the role — treated as hard gates.
AI development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) appear under a dedicated 'AI-Augmented Development' responsibility section, not a requirements gate; listed as preferred.
OAuth/SAML appear under the Technical Expertise section's 'API & integration design' bullet as authentication requirements; OAuth is primary with SAML as an alternative since they serve the same auth gate.
The role is explicitly titled and framed as 'Staff Software Engineer' throughout the posting, and the scope — owning architecture across a forecasting platform, setting technical direction, and leading cross-team integration — supports the Staff band.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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