Principal Analytics Engineer, Workday
$184-276k
More information about location
Office located in Pleasanton, CA
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
$184-276k
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
- 7+ years of professional experience in an Analytics Engineering or Data Engineering role, preferably within a SaaS or high-tech environment
- 7+ years of professional experience in SQL and strong production experience with a major cloud data warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift)
- Extensive experience with DBT, including advanced features (macros, packages, source freshness, custom tests)
- Strong familiarity with version control (GitHub), CI/CD, and modern development workflows
- Strong understanding of data warehousing concepts and dimensional modeling
- Experience in a technical coaching or mentoring role with demonstrable impact on junior engineers' development
- Demonstrated ability to manage requirements and expectations across multiple, competing business units
- Strong communicator who can build trusted partnerships across GTM, Finance, and Exec stakeholders
- Experience with a major orchestration tool and defining complex data dependencies
- Deep functional knowledge of core SaaS business domains (e.g., Salesforce/CRM data, Product telemetry, Financial modeling)
- Proficiency in Python for scripting, data manipulation, and pipeline orchestration
- Bias for action - you prefer launching usable, iterative data models that deliver immediate value over waiting for perfect solutions
- Comfortable working through ambiguity in fast-moving, cross-functional environments
- Familiarity with data governance tools, data catalogs, and data observability solutions
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or quantitative field. Master's or Ph.D. degree preferred
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Principal Analytics Engineer with skills in data product development, pipeline management, data modeling, data transformation, and data analytics to support enterprise analytics and AI initiatives
- The Principal Analytics Engineer's role moves beyond execution to focus on architectural governance, acting as the dbt expert to define and enforce data product development best practices for scalability and cost-efficiency
- This role requires a passion for coaching junior engineers, providing deep technical mentorship to foster a culture of engineering rigor and elevate team performance
- You will need to master the complex organizational dynamics inherent in cross-functional projects, acting as the key technical liaison to build consensus and drive the adoption of unified enterprise metrics
- Ultimately, you will be responsible for defining the strategy for foundational data projects, ensuring all business teams have access to optimized, efficient and trusted data products
- Architect, design, and lead the build-out of end-to-end performant, reliable, and scalable data pipelines and the transformation layer
- Act as the dbt subject matter expert, defining and championing data modeling standards and best practices across the organization while managing the full lifecycle of complex dimensional models and metrics from prototyping to production
- Partner cross-functionally with Product Owners, Data Analysts, and business leaders (Sales, Marketing, Finance) to scope and deliver high-impact analytics initiatives, ensuring analytics requirements are clearly understood and effectively implemented
- Operate as a highly independent individual contributor, solving complex, ambiguous problems and delivering high-quality, architecturally sound solutions with minimal oversight and a high degree of ownership over critical data domains
- Mentor, guide, and coach junior and mid-level engineers to deliver complex and next-generation features, actively instilling a culture of software engineering rigor, code quality, best practice, standards, and technical excellence within the team
- Master the dynamics of high-stakes projects, expertly navigating stakeholder and internal complexities to align business needs with technical feasibility and secure consensus on enterprise-wide metric definitions
- Design and build database architectures to handle massive and complex data volumes, skillfully balancing computational load, query latency, and data warehouse cost efficiency, integrating strong data quality audits and testing frameworks at scale to ensure resilience
- Boost overall data team productivity by proactively identifying technical debt, improving tooling, automating complex workflows, and streamlining processes for transformation and deployment
- Bring a customer-centric, product-oriented mindset to the table, collaborating with external and internal stakeholders to resolve ambiguities and ensure shipped data features are impactful, reliable, and align with business outcomes
- Build and maintain user friendly documentation for data models, data processes, workflows, and systems for transparency and knowledge sharing
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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