The work #

ServiceNow was — and is — one of the largest enterprise platforms in the world. When I joined, mobile was an afterthought. By the time I left, it was a strategic priority with dedicated engineering, UX, and product leadership — and I’d helped build that from nearly nothing.

This wasn’t “build an app” work. ServiceNow is a deeply configurable enterprise platform with hundreds of product teams building on it. The mobile challenge was architectural: how do you bring that kind of system to phones and tablets in a way that’s genuinely good, not a shrunken desktop UI? And how do you build the platform layer that lets dozens of other teams build mobile experiences without each one reinventing the wheel?

What I built #

Cabrillo was the big one. It was ServiceNow’s JavaScript bridge framework for native mobile apps — the platform layer that let the company’s web-based product teams extend their features into native iOS and Android without rewriting everything. I architected the resource presentation system that powered it, which became a patent (US11048853B2): dynamic resource identification and context-aware UI rendering for native mobile. Cabrillo became the foundation that the rest of mobile at ServiceNow was built on.

Beyond the bridge, I drove the architecture for REST APIs that connected the mobile clients to ServiceNow’s backend, real-time APIs for live updates and collaboration features, and the push notification infrastructure that enterprise customers needed to actually use mobile in their workflows.

The IoT pivot came later. I took on a Director of Engineering role for IoT, working on systems for network device discovery and management in enterprise environments. That work produced another patent — Discovery and Management of Devices (US20210160145A1) — covering automated discovery, classification, and management of devices across computing environments. This was declarative management thinking applied to enterprise infrastructure: define the desired state, let the system figure out how to get there.

The org #

I grew the mobile engineering organization to 5 teams and 45 engineers — hiring, structuring, mentoring, and retaining through multiple product cycles. This wasn’t a team I inherited; it was one I helped build from its earliest days. That meant not just recruiting engineers but making the case internally that mobile deserved real investment, dedicated UX, and its own product leadership.

I was also a frequent executive presenter at ServiceNow Knowledge conferences and customer roadshows — translating mobile and platform strategy into language that enterprise buyers and C-suite audiences could act on.

Why it matters #

ServiceNow was where I learned to operate at scale. Not just code scale — organizational scale. How to build teams, navigate enterprise product politics, make strategic bets that survive roadmap negotiations, and keep pushing for quality and craft even when the organization’s gravity pulls toward “good enough.”

The technical work mattered too. Architecting platform infrastructure that other teams build on is a specific skill — you have to think about extensibility, developer experience, and long-term maintainability in ways that product feature work doesn’t demand. And the IoT and device management work gave me direct experience with the kind of declarative, state-driven management systems that are becoming the standard for how fleets of devices are administered.

The deeper lesson: mobile was never the point. The point was understanding new surfaces and making the platform work beautifully on them. That instinct — platform thinking applied to wherever users actually are — is the thread that connects everything I’ve done.