Senior Director of Data Science & Machine Learning, Workday
CA$247-370.4k
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR and finance
Be an early applicant
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR and finance
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
CA$247-370.4k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To leverage the power of AI to elevate humans and supercharge work, moving business forever forward.
Role
Who you are
- We are seeking a visionary and pragmatic Sr Director of Data Science & Machine Learning to lead our high-impact AI strategy and execution
- 10+ years of professional experience across Data Science, AI and ML within an enterprise environment
- 5+ years of professional experience within a senior leadership role
- Extensive experience moving Generative AI models from "notebook" to "production." Deep understanding of prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and agentic orchestration
- Experience with Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, GCP, H2O, Tecton, Hugging Face, Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Flowise, LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith and other commercial and open source models and frameworks
- Experience with modern data stack patterns (Lakehouse, Data Mesh) and the specific challenges of MLOps (drift detection, latency, cost management)
- Understanding of how ML models integrate with front-end applications via APIs (FastAPI, React)
- Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field
What the job involves
- The Enterprise Data and AI Technologies & Architecture (EDATA) organization is a dynamic and evolving team that is spearheading Workday’s growth through trusted data excellence, innovation, and architectural thought leadership
- Equipped with an array of skills in data & AI platforms and architecture, data science, engineering, machine learning and AI strategy & product management, this team orchestrates the flow of data across our growing company while ensuring data accessibility, accuracy, and security
- With a relentless focus on innovation and efficiency, Workmates in EDATA enable the transformation of complex data sets into actionable insights that fuel strategic decisions and position Workday at the forefront of the technology industry
- This is a "builder-leader" role responsible for bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and production-grade software and operations
- The Sr Director will lead a team of Data Scientists, ML Engineers (MLEs), MLOps Professionals, and Full-Stack Engineers
- The team will drive our data products from traditional predictive analytics into a modern, Agentic AI-driven ecosystem
- Strategic Leadership: Define the North Star for AI/ML initiatives, ensuring alignment with overarching business goals
- Multi-Disciplinary Management: Lead and mentor a diverse team of 15+ professionals across data science, engineering, and operations
- GenAI & Agentic Frameworks: Architect and oversee the deployment of LLM-based applications using RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and Agentic workflows
- Innovation Lab: Rapidly prototype new features using emerging tools (Hugging Face, Gemini, Claude) while maintaining a path to scalable production
- Product-Led AI Strategy: Work closely with Product Management to embed predictive insights and Agentic AI directly into custom solutions
- LLM Orchestration & Evaluation: Lead the implementation of Agentic workflows using solutions such as LangGraph and Flowise, ensuring reliability through rigorous evaluation frameworks like LangSmith
- Cost Management (FinOps): Optimize the cost of AI features by balancing the use of frontier models (Claude 3.5, Gemini 1.5) with smaller, fine-tuned open-source models via Hugging Face
- Stakeholder Influence: Act as a bilingual translator between complex technical architectures and executive-level business value
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.
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