ServiceNow is doing something that, on the surface at least, may seem a little contradictory. The company is growing, and AI is booming. It’s spending heavily, talking up agentic AI, and hiring for roles that barely existed a few years ago. At the same time, however, people are losing their jobs.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean AI is replacing ServiceNow workers, and this is where things get a bit difficult to understand. ServiceNow hasn’t published a neat list showing which roles are being cut and which ones are being hired instead. Layoffs are messy, job titles are messier, and companies tend to talk a lot more openly about the jobs they’re creating than the ones they’re getting rid of.
From this, there seems to be a bigger question forming that feels bigger than another round of tech layoffs. What does ServiceNow’s ideal workforce actually look like? Because if you look at where the company is investing, the skills showing up in job adverts, and the way existing ServiceNow roles are starting to absorb AI, there are some clues. It seems that, more than anything, the definition of a valuable ServiceNow employee may be starting to change.
Which ServiceNow Jobs Are Actually Being Cut?
As we still don’t have anything close to a complete map in terms of layoffs, the info is slightly confusing at the moment. What we do know is that ServiceNow’s restructuring is global, and its own wording is pretty revealing – it is making “necessary changes” to how the company is structured, driving efficiencies, hiring for AI-focused skills, and planning to finish 2026 with roughly the same headcount it started with.
So this isn’t really a story about ServiceNow getting any smaller. At least, not yet. California WARN filings – official advance notices that employers must submit when executing large-scale layoffs – give us some of the clearest hard numbers. Four filings this year account for 404 jobs across Santa Clara and San Diego, split between 117 positions announced in June and another 287 in July.
Reporting on that later round suggests the cuts included software engineers, product managers, and senior execs, so this clearly isn’t limited to one underperforming sales team or some particularly obvious pocket of the business.
Additionally, all of this is happening while ServiceNow is doing extremely well. Its Q2 revenue reached $3.99B, up 24% year on year, while subscription revenue grew 24.5%. Perhaps more relevant to this story, ServiceNow said its AI products had passed $1B in annual contract value, while agentic deployments increased ninefold in nine months.
This all makes this less of a traditional layoff story and more of a workforce reshuffle. ServiceNow itself has already said its platform is creating “real AI efficiencies” internally, but the harder question is where those efficiencies actually show up.
That might not mean an AI agent suddenly replacing a product manager or engineer. Hardit Singh, a ServiceNow MVP who has worked across Deloitte, EY, and American Express, sees something slightly different happening across the ServiceNow space.
He told NowBen that he’s seeing more developers and admins from outside the ServiceNow world building applications through vibe coding, only leaning on experienced ServiceNow Developers when they get stuck. In other words, AI doesn’t necessarily remove the developer, but changes how many people need the developer, and what for.
The New AI Jobs Aren’t All That New
If you take a look at the current ServiceNow job listings, there are absolutely some roles appearing now that would have looked pretty unusual a few years ago.
At the time of writing, the company is advertising roles including:
- Staff AI Engineer – Conversational & Agentic AI
- Senior Staff AI-Native Software Engineer – Agentic Systems
- Principal Product Manager, Voice AI
- Forward Deployed Solution Engineer – Applied AI
There’s even a Staff Inbound Product Manager for AI Specialists and Voice AI, working on systems designed to resolve employee needs before a traditional IT ticket is ever created.
So, in short, yes, these new specialist AI jobs are very real. But look slightly further down the careers page, and you’ll find some other intriguing roles. ServiceNow is also hiring for a Presales Solution Consultant – Platform, Data & AI. That’s not a completely new profession per se invented by generative AI – it’s a familiar ServiceNow role with AI becoming part of the job.
This is much closer to how Hardit sees agentic AI affecting the ecosystem. He told NowBen: “I’d say it’s an evolution of existing ServiceNow roles, but with a fundamentally different way of solving problems. Instead of just building workflows, we’re increasingly designing systems where AI agents can reason, make decisions, and take actions autonomously.”
I think this tells the story of an interesting shift that a lot of experienced ServiceNow professionals may have to accept. A Solution Consultant doesn’t necessarily become an “AI Solution Consultant”, nor does an architect suddenly become an “AI Architect”.
But now, it looks like they are expected to understand what agents do, how they interact with enterprise data, where they should be allowed to take action, and what happens when something goes wrong.
Hardit mentioned that if he were building a ServiceNow team now, traditional platform knowledge would still be critical, but he would place much more weight on architecture, problem-solving, business understanding, integrations, data, AI literacy, and the ability to validate and govern AI-driven solutions.
AI may not make experienced ServiceNow professionals less valuable. But it could put more pressure on roles where the work is mostly about carrying out defined tasks that AI can increasingly help with.
Could This Pose Problems for Junior Roles?
How AI is impacting current ServiceNow roles is one thing. But what does the future look like for those hoping to break into ServiceNow, and how can they truly succeed in the AI automation age?
It seems as though ServiceNow is publicly taking the opposition position to the idea that AI means shutting the door on junior workers. Its early-careers site says AI will create more opportunities for younger talent, backed by AI-powered learning, mentorship, and hands-on projects. ServiceNow University has also organized itself around roles such as AI System Administrator, AI Application Developer, AI Platform Owner, and AI Implementer.
The company is obviously trying to uphold a reskilling story alongside its current restructuring story, but can the two coexist at the same time? Hardit thinks repetitive and execution-heavy work will reduce, “particularly at entry level”.
He doesn’t think that this means junior roles start to disappear, but that the bar will evolve and change: “The differentiator will increasingly be how effectively people use AI while understanding the fundamentals behind the work.”
Looking closer, I would say that a chicken-and-egg problem emerges from that. The senior architects of today are most valuable because they spent years making mistakes, debugging strange problems, and learning why supposedly straightforward ServiceNow projects rarely stay straightforward. So what then happens if AI covers all the work people traditionally leaned on?
ServiceNow may have provided an answer to this through training, simulations, mentorship, and internal reskilling. Its own learning strategy talks about AI-personalized development, putting employees into practical environments where they can build skills rather than simply sitting through courses.
But we don’t really know how much of the current restructuring is reskilling existing people into this new ServiceNow workforce, versus removing one set of skills and hiring another – which is an important aspect to keep an eye on.
Final Thoughts
ServiceNow doesn’t appear to be replacing thousands of traditional employees with thousands of people carrying “AI” in their job title. The evidence so far points to something messier – fewer people doing some types of execution-heavy work, a relatively small number of deeply specialist AI roles, and AI competence becoming an expectation across jobs that already existed.
The headcount might end up roughly where it started, but the jobs inside it may look a lot different.