Principal AI Researcher, Workday
$228-342k
More information about location
2+ days a week in office (Pleasanton, CA)
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR and finance
Open for applications
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR and finance
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$228-342k
More information about location
2+ days a week in office (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
- 8+ years of experience in AI/ML research or applied science, with a proven history of taking products from applied research to global-scale production
- Ph.D. or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Math, Physics, or equivalent technical field
- 4+ years of professional experience using deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow
- 2+ years of deep expertise in LLMs or VLMs, specifically in training, alignment (RLHF/DPO), or agentic reasoning frameworks
- SOTA Publication Record: A strong history of lead-researcher publications in top AI venues OR a proven track record of shipping industry-defining AI innovations to millions of users
- Agentic AI Pioneer: Strong background in reinforcement learning, tool-use, or multi-agent systems
- Systems Thinking: Ability to conduct research under real-world constraints, such as latency, cost-to-serve, and enterprise data privacy
- Leadership in Ambiguity: Proven experience in building a research agenda from the ground up and leading technical strike teams through open-ended problems
- Communication: Exceptional ability to translate complex research breakthroughs into strategic value for product leaders and executive stakeholders
- Ethics & Trust: A deep commitment to developing AI that is explainable, fair, and safe for the world’s largest workforces
What the job involves
- As a Principal AI Researcher, you will be a technical founder and visionary for the Workday AI Research Team
- This is a role for a scientist-leader who thrives on defining the frontier rather than just following a roadmap
- You will move the needle on how LLMs and autonomous agents function within the complex, high-trust environment of global enterprise data
- You will bridge the gap between groundbreaking theory and massive-scale application
- Your work will involve defining research roadmaps for agentic reasoning, long-horizon planning, and model alignment, ensuring that Workday remains the world leader in responsible, intelligent enterprise agents
- Define research direction in Agentic AI and LLMs
- Advance the state of the art in agentic systems, including retrieval, grounding, memory, context, personalization, etc
- Foundational Model Research: Advance Workday’s proprietary capabilities in pre-training, post-training (RLHF, DPO), and domain-specific alignment for HR and Finance workflows
- Publish & Open Source: Lead Workday’s contribution to the global AI community through publications at top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, ACL, etc.) and strategic open-source releases
- Research-to-Production Bridge: Partner with Agent Factory engineering pods to integrate SOTA research into production-ready services that scale to the world's largest organizations
- Mentorship & Culture: Act as a force multiplier for the newly formed research team, fostering a culture of scientific rigor, curiosity, and high-velocity experimentation
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 & Executive Chair)Annel began his career at Morgan Stanley as a Corporate Finance Analyst. He then spent nearly 6 years at PeopleSoft as a Senior VP before co-founding Workday in 2005, where he has served as the CEO ever since.
Carl Eschenbach
(CEO)Carl joined Workday in 2022 as Co-CEO, becoming CEO in 2024. He has also been a Partner at Sequoia Capital since 2016. Previously, he spent 14 years at VMware as President and COO and 3 years at Inktomi Corporation as the VP of North America Sales.
Peter Bailis
(CTO)Prior to joining Workday in 2025, People was a VP of Engineering at Google. He also previously founded Sisu Data, where he served as the CEO for over 5 years.
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 117 more jobs at Workday