Principal Software Development Engineer, Workday
$206.4-309.6k
Office located in CA, Pleasanton
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
$206.4-309.6k
Office located in CA, Pleasanton
1001+ employees
Company mission
To leverage the power of AI to elevate humans and supercharge work, moving business forever forward.
Role
Who you are
- This role requires deep expertise in distributed systems and cloud infrastructure, combined with the ability to provide sound technical solutions to meet business requirements, solve complex technical challenges and drive alignment across multiple teams
- 12+ years building large-scale distributed systems or infrastructure platforms
- 10+ years of experience with public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure, or Oracle) at scale
- 8+ years of production grade expertise with Kubernetes and the CNCF ecosystem
- 10+ years of proven experience designing scalable and resilient distributed systems
- 5+ years of development experience in Go
- 5+ years of experience with Python, Ruby, or Linux-based automation/scripting
- Experience building internal platforms used by multiple engineering teams
- Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure (networking, storage, compute)
- Experience leading large multi-quarter cross-organizational technical initiatives
- Strong background in automation, CI/CD, and platform engineering
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction without direct authority
What the job involves
- The Multi-Cloud Platform Engineering team is the architectural backbone of Workday
- We don’t simply consume cloud infrastructure, we engineer the abstraction layer that allows one of the world’s largest enterprise SaaS platforms to operate seamlessly across AWS and GCP
- Our team develops the core infrastructure services, automation frameworks, and operational tooling that power Workday’s multi-cloud environment
- These platform capabilities are used by internal engineering teams, consultants, and technical partners to provision environments, onboard customers, and operate the Workday platform at scale
- We work at the nexus of distributed systems, infrastructure engineering, and platform reliability, tackling complex technical challenges while empowering the broader engineering organization to innovate faster and operate more safely in the cloud
- As a Principal Software Engineer, you will shape the technical direction and long-term architecture of Workday’s multi-cloud platform
- You will lead the design of large-scale distributed systems, drive cross-team initiatives, and influence platform strategy across the organization
- Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of multi-cloud platform services, ensuring they are secure, scalable, and highly available
- Design and deliver large-scale, resilient distributed systems that support mission-critical workloads with strong performance and reliability guarantees
- Drive cross-organizational technical strategy and initiatives to improve reliability, scalability, performance, and operational excellence across the platform
- Identify, define, and drive solutions for complex, ambiguous platform challenges that span multiple teams, domains, and services
- Establish and champion best practices for distributed systems design, reliability, observability, and automation, and ensure they are adopted across engineering teams
- Provide technical leadership and mentorship to senior and staff engineers, raising the overall technical bar and fostering a culture of engineering excellence
- Improve end-to-end observability, reliability, and automated recovery for platform services, including proactive detection, self-healing, and robust incident response
- Accelerate onboarding of new customers, regions, and products through automation, standardization, and repeatable platform patterns
- Drive cloud efficiency and infrastructure optimization at scale, including cost optimization, capacity planning, and effective use of cloud-native capabilities
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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