Senior Software Engineer, Workday
$190.1-285.1k
More information about location
Office located in Pleasanton, CA
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR, finance & IT
Open for applications
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR, finance & IT
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$190.1-285.1k
More information about location
Office located in Pleasanton, CA
1001+ employees
Company mission
To leverage the power of AI to elevate humans and supercharge work, moving business forever forward.
Role
Who you are
- Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical work experience
- Core Development: 8+ years of professional software development experience writing clean, high-concurrency, and production-grade code utilizing Python, GoLang, or Java/C++
- System Architecture: 4+ years of experience designing, building, and evolving scalable, distributed microservices architectures
- Performance Engineering: Proven track record of diagnosing and resolving complex performance issues, including memory leaks, CPU bottlenecks, and database/IO serialization delays
- Profiling & APM Tools: Hands-on experience with profiling, tracing, and APM tools (e.g., Datadog, New Relic, OpenTelemetry, pprof, or CloudWatch) to analyze runtime application behavior
- Data Layer Optimization: Strong expertise in database optimization, including writing efficient SQL/NoSQL queries, indexing strategies, and designing multi-tier caching layers (e.g., Redis, Memcached)
Desirable
- Cloud & Infrastructure Awareness: Solid understanding of how application code interacts with cloud infrastructure (specifically AWS or GCP compute, memory, and networking boundaries)
- Testing & Benchmarking: Experience establishing micro-benchmarking, load testing, and stress testing practices (e.g., using Locust, JMeter, or k6) within CI/CD pipelines
- Concurrency & Parallelism: Deep understanding of asynchronous programming, multi-threading, memory management, and distributed systems concepts
- Technical Leadership: Demonstrated ability to drive design reviews, raise the bar for code quality through rigorous peer reviews, and mentor mid-level engineers on writing performance-first code
- Collaboration: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a proven ability to collaborate effectively with platform, data, and product engineering teams
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer with a passion for architectural design and high-performance engineering
- In this role, you will own the technical design and optimization of our core software platforms
- You are a hands-on technical leader who can independently architect scalable systems, while simultaneously deep-diving into code-level profiling to eliminate latencies and resource bottlenecks
- You will bridge the gap between application code and cloud infrastructure, ensuring our software is built from the ground up to be fast, lean, and resilient under production loads
- Design and Architect High-Performance Services: Lead the technical design of core features and microservices, ensuring they are decoupled, horizontally scalable, and optimized for low-latency and high-throughput
- Write Core, Highly Efficient Code: Act as a primary individual contributor, writing clean, production-ready code for critical paths and refactoring legacy components for maximum efficiency
- Diagnose and Resolve Performance Bottlenecks: Conduct deep-dive profiling, memory footprint analysis, and CPU utilization reviews using APM tools to proactively find and fix bottlenecks before they impact production
- Optimize the Data Layer: Own the efficiency of data flow, including designing caching strategies, optimizing database schemas/queries, and selecting efficient serialization formats
- Partner with Infrastructure Teams: Collaborate closely with the Cloud Infrastructure team to ensure the software design perfectly aligns with our AWS architecture, maximizing compute, memory, and network efficiency
- Raise the Technical Bar: Drive rigorous code reviews, focusing heavily on architectural alignment, concurrency hazards, and algorithmic efficiency. Mentoring other engineers on writing performance-first code
- Establish Benchmarking and Load Testing: Implement automated micro-benchmarking and load-testing workflows within the CI/CD pipeline to catch performance regressions early
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.
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