Senior Software Engineer, Workday
Agentic AI & API Platform
€86.4-129.6k
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR, finance & IT
Open for applications
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR, finance & IT
1001+ employees
Open for applications
€86.4-129.6k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To leverage the power of AI to elevate humans and supercharge work, moving business forever forward.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of experience designing and building large‑scale, mission‑critical backend systems
- 5+ years of hands‑on experience with TypeScript or Python and strong OO/functional design skills
- 4+ years of experience building and operating web service APIs (REST/SOAP/GraphQL) at scale
- Demonstrated experience owning complex features or systems from design through production
- Comfort using AI‑assisted code generation tools (such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) as part of the day‑to‑day development workflow
- Deep understanding of distributed systems: concurrency, multithreading, consistency, fault tolerance, and performance tuning
- Strong experience with API design and lifecycle: OpenAPI/Swagger, versioning strategies, backward compatibility, contract testing, and documentation
- Experience with API gateway or edge patterns (routing, authentication/authorization, throttling, rate limiting, transformation, multi‑tenant concerns)
- Hands‑on experience with observability stacks (metrics, tracing, logging) and using them to improve latency and reliability
- Familiarity with GraphQL and data‑oriented APIs; exposure to Data Cloud / analytical stores or MCP‑style agent integration patterns is a plus
- Strong testing discipline (unit, integration, contract, performance) and experience with modern testing and observability stacks such as JUnit, ScalaTest, Postman, Mockito, Jacoco/Scoverage
- Experience with cloud and containerized environments (e.g., AWS, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines
- Proven track record of mentoring engineers, leading technical discussions, and driving cross‑team initiatives
- Ability to translate product and AI/agent requirements into robust API and backend designs
- Comfort working in ambiguous problem spaces with a bias for pragmatic, iterative delivery
What the job involves
- As a Senior Software Development Engineer in Product Engineering, you will be a technical leader in designing and delivering high‑throughput, low‑latency APIs and frameworks that support Workday's next generation of products and agents
- You will shape API design, drive performance and observability improvements, and coach and grow future senior engineers across the team
- Lead design and implementation of APIs and platform features used by Product Engineering teams
- Champion consistent API standards, patterns, and tooling that align with cross‑org guidance while solving concrete product needs
- Help Product Engineering teams expose capabilities via REST, GraphQL, and emerging integration patterns in a way that is friendly to agents and external consumers
- Lead end‑to‑end design and development of complex backend services and APIs
- Drive consensus with product managers, architects, and partner teams to define clear, evolvable API contracts and data models, using OpenAPI and internal standards
- Drive performance and scalability improvements, including latency optimization, capacity planning, and resiliency strategies for mission‑critical product flows
- Design and implement observability for product APIs (metrics, tracing, structured logging), and use data to drive technical decisions and SLOs
- Collaborate on frameworks, tools, and patterns that make it simpler for other Product Engineering teams to define, publish, and maintain APIs
- Work with data platform teams to define patterns for exposing data safely and efficiently to API and agent workflows
- Provide technical leadership through design reviews, RFCs, spike investigations, and coaching junior engineers
- Participate in and improve on‑call and incident response processes; own root cause analysis and long‑term remediation for significant issues
- Act as a trusted technical partner to teams across Product Engineering, helping them make API and integration decisions
Our take
Workday is a cloud-based software vendor that provides management of workforces and finances. The company uses a single database for workforce management and financial management to offer integration and optimize business intelligence across companies. It has added to the packages and tools it offers over the years, providing analytic options that allow companies to combine third-party data with information collected by Workday.
The company has also grown through acquisitions and partnerships to broaden its capabilities. Most recently, in 2025 it purchases Sana, an AI-driven enterprise knowledge and learning platform, to create a "new front door for work". This acquisition allows Workday to integrate Sana's AI-powered search, agents, and learning capabilities with its own data and workflows, allowing employees to access information, automate tasks, and complete their day entirely within Workday.
Through a combination of strategic acquisitions and in-house development, Workday has built a comprehensive suite of HR, financial, and enterprise tools. By focusing on innovation and AI-driven workflows, the company continues to push productivity and decision-making for organizations worldwide. Building on this track record, Workday is very much positioned for even more growth, reinforcing its status as a leader in shaping the future of work.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
16% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Oct 2011
$85m
SERIES F
Apr 2009
$75m
SERIES E
Total funding: $215.3m
Company HQ
Pleasanton, CA
Leadership
Aneel Bhusri
(Co-Founder & CEO)Annel began their career at Morgan Stanley as a Corporate Finance Analyst. They then spent nearly 6 years at PeopleSoft as a Senior VP before co-founding Workday in 2005.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 94 more jobs at Workday