Director, Forward Deployed Solution Architect – Applied AI FDE

Company Description

It all started in sunny San Diego, California in 2004 when a visionary engineer, Fred Luddy, saw the potential to transform how we work. Fast forward to today — ServiceNow stands as a global market leader, bringing innovative AI-enhanced technology to over 8,100 customers, including 85% of the Fortune 500®. Our intelligent cloud-based platform seamlessly connects people, systems, and processes to empower organizations to find smarter, faster, and better ways to work. But this is just the beginning of our journey. Join us as we pursue our purpose to make the world work better for everyone.

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 organizations that can move fast, deliver measurable value, and transform isolated wins into scalable success. 

As a Director, Forward Deployed Solution Architect (FDSA), you lead a high-impact team of Forward Deployed Solution Architects embedded with customers to drive that transformation. You guide your team in uncovering opportunities, designing AI-powered systems that deliver ROI, and ensuring those solutions scale effectively across the Now Platform. You serve as a strategic partner to both customers and internal stakeholders, shaping the vision for applied AI and operationalizing innovation at scale. 

This is a rare opportunity to define what great looks like in the field—mentoring top talent, influencing product direction, and setting the standard for enterprise AI adoption. 

Who You Are:

You are a visionary leader and strategic thinker who thrives in dynamic, fast-paced environments. With a deep understanding of AI and enterprise architecture, you excel at turning ambiguity into clarity—not just for yourself, but for your team and your customers. You bring a strong analytical mindset and a passion for innovation, enabling your team to deliver intelligent solutions that align with business goals. 

You empower your team to work cross-functionally with engineers, designers, and stakeholders, fostering collaboration and accountability. You guide them in navigating complex environments, identifying friction points, and architecting scalable systems that solve mission-critical challenges. 

You embody ServiceNow’s values and instill them in your team: 

• Customer First: You champion business outcomes and ensure your team delivers measurable value. 
• Bold Innovation: You encourage creative thinking and challenge conventional approaches. 
• One Team: You foster a culture of shared ownership and deep collaboration. 
• Integrity and Belonging: You lead with empathy, build trust, and create an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive. 

What You’ll Do:

• Lead and Empower Teams: Guide a team of forward-deployed architects and engineers in identifying high-impact AI opportunities through strategic discovery workshops and stakeholder alignment. 
• Architect Scalable AI Solutions: Oversee the design of AI-native systems leveraging LLMs, RAG pipelines, retrieval logic, and workflow orchestration—ensuring technical excellence and business relevance. 
• Accelerate Delivery Through Collaboration: Partner with FDSEs and cross-functional teams to drive rapid prototyping, testing, and iteration, enabling fast time-to-value for customers. 
• Establish and Scale Best Practices: Develop and disseminate repeatable frameworks, reusable templates, and modular components that elevate solution quality and consistency across engagements. 
• Drive Strategic Alignment: Influence executive stakeholders through compelling storytelling, solution framing, and clear articulation of business impact. 
• Champion Field Insights: Capture and synthesize feedback from customer deployments to inform product strategy, shape platform evolution, and prioritize roadmap investments. 
• Enable Organizational Scale: Equip internal teams and customers with the tools, documentation, and onboarding assets needed to replicate success and expand adoption. 

What Success Looks Like:

• Team-Led Solution Delivery: Your team delivers validated AI solution-ready builds within 8–12 weeks, directly addressing business-critical challenges. 
• Cross-Team Reuse and Adoption: Assets developed under your leadership—prompts, orchestration logic, frameworks—are adopted across teams and codified for scale. 
• Platform Influence: Your team’s work drives meaningful contributions to the Now Platform through structured feedback and architectural innovation. 
• Business Impact Realized: Solutions led by your team result in measurable improvements in efficiency, automation, user satisfaction, or adoption. 
• Scaled Production Deployment: Delivered solutions serve as the foundation for enterprise-wide production rollouts across customer environments. 
• Trusted Leadership Presence: You are recognized by customers and internal stakeholders as a strategic, dependable, and technically credible leader who drives outcomes and inspires teams. 

Qualifications

What You Bring:

• Experience: In leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into work processes, decision-making, or problem-solving. This may include using AI-powered tools, automating workflows, analyzing AI-driven insights, or exploring AI’s potential impact on the function or industry. 
• Enterprise Leadership Experience: 13+ years of experience in enterprise technology, including 5–7+ years leading AI/ML architecture, field engineering, or solution consulting teams. Proven track record of driving initiatives from concept to delivery and scaling impact across organizations. 
• Technical Vision and Depth: Deep understanding of LLM-based systems and GenAI pipelines, including prompt engineering, RAG, orchestration, and data modeling. Able to guide teams in designing full-stack intelligent workflows that deliver measurable business value. 
• Cloud & Infrastructure Expertise: Extensive hands-on experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP, including containerization, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation), and enterprise integration. Capable of setting architectural standards and mentoring teams on cloud-native best practices. 
• Engineering Leadership: Proficient in Python and SQL, with working knowledge of GenAI frameworks like LangChain, Semantic Kernel, or similar. Able to lead technical reviews, support code-level decisions, and foster engineering excellence across teams. 
• Customer & Delivery Leadership: Skilled in navigating ambiguity and high-stakes environments. Experienced in guiding cross-functional teams, influencing executive stakeholders, and ensuring clarity and alignment from ideation through implementation. 
• Field Enablement & Presence: Willing and able to travel up to 30% to embed with customers, lead strategic workshops, unblock delivery teams, and drive tangible outcomes. Adept at translating field insights into scalable practices and reusable assets. 
• Platform Familiarity (Nice to Have): Understanding of the ServiceNow platform, low-code tooling, or other enterprise SaaS ecosystems, with the ability to align AI solutions to platform capabilities. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated success delivering AI or intelligent workflow solutions at scale. 
• Familiarity with LangChain, Semantic Kernel, vector databases, and Python. 
• Experience with SaaS platforms, enterprise data integration, and low-code environments. 
• History of converting field delivery into reusable product patterns and internal tools. 
• Proven ability to lead teams deploying AI solutions that drive tangible customer impact. 
• Hands-on experience integrating AI into enterprise SaaS platforms. 
• Skilled at translating real-world constraints into scalable product enhancements. 
• Understanding of AI governance, compliance, and enterprise security practices. 

This is your opportunity to lead a team at the forefront of real-world AI innovation—partnering with the world’s leading enterprises, shaping strategic solutions, and transforming every customer engagement into a smarter, more scalable Now Platform. As a Director, you don’t just architect solutions—you build the next generation of technical leaders, codify best practices, and drive enterprise transformation at scale.   

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $236,000 - $413,000, 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, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or nationality, ancestry, age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, 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. 

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