Principal Software Development Engineer, Workday
CA$168-252k
More information about location
2-3 days a week in office
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR and finance
Open for applications
Enterprise AI platform for managing HR and finance
1001+ employees
Open for applications
CA$168-252k
More information about location
2-3 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To leverage the power of AI to elevate humans and supercharge work, moving business forever forward.
Role
Who you are
- 6 or more years of validated industry experience
- Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering
- Strong software engineering experience with designing and building scalable, distributed systems
- Deep understanding of cloud computing, cloud infrastructure, and distributed systems; experience with AWS and GCP
- Experience developing microservices, APIs, and large-scale web applications
- Proficiency with Python, Go, and infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform
- Experience running and maintaining Kubernetes clusters in production
- Implement and manage CI/CD workflows to automate testing, integration, and delivery of software components
- Design, implement, and maintain robust cloud services for deploying, monitoring, and scaling, primarily with Kubernetes
- Troubleshoot and resolve performance bottlenecks, system outages, and operational issues collaboratively with other engineering teams
- Ensure security and compliance of cloud platforms, implementing best practices for encryption, data protection, and access control
- Stay abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies, providing recommendations for continuous improvement of engineering practices
- Experience with large-scale ML data pipelines and data lakes
- Ability to think across layers of the ML stack, from infrastructure to model deployment
- Experience developing monitoring and alerting systems for ML infrastructure
- Understanding of agentic AI concepts; experience with LangChain and LangSmith is preferred
- Proven leadership or mentoring experience
What the job involves
- This is an opportunity to be part of a growth team focused on MLOps. We build ML capabilities into our products, and you would be building part of the next generation of Workday technology. We believe predictive products can be as ground-breaking to the next generation of technology as mobile was to the last
- As a Principal Software Engineer you will help develop ML-powered features and experiences for every user across our HR & Talent product portfolio. You will work closely with ML engineers and other software teams to deliver critically important infrastructure and software frameworks that enable machine learning across Workday’s product ecosystem
- You will apply modern MLOps, CloudOps, and data engineering stacks to enable development, training, deployment, and lifecycle management of a variety of ML capabilities; supervised and unsupervised, deep learning and classical. You will be responsible for the design & development of new APIs/microservices and deploy them using Python, Go, Terraform, and Kubernetes at scale
- You will use Workday’s vast computing resources on rich, exclusive datasets to deliver value that transforms the way our end-users experience WD. We will challenge you to apply your best creative thinking, analysis, problem-solving, and technical abilities to make an impact on thousands of enterprises and millions of people
- Architect Distributed Systems: Lead the design and implementation of high-throughput microservices and APIs (Python/Go) that serve as the backbone for Workday’s ML ecosystem
- Engineer the Platform: Build and optimize a unified ML development experience using Kubeflow, Kubernetes (EKS/GKE), and specialized compute orchestration (CPUs/GPUs)
- Scale Cloud Infrastructure: Own the end-to-end lifecycle of cloud-based services, utilizing Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) to build resilient, self-healing environments
- Drive Engineering Excellence: Lead architecture reviews, code reviews, and technology evaluations to ensure our systems meet 99.99% reliability standards
- Support Agentic AI: Design the architectural patterns and observability frameworks required to support emerging Agentic AI systems and LLM-based applications
- Collaborate as a Technical Lead: Partner with data scientists, ML engineers, and architects to translate complex data needs into elegant, maintainable software solutions
- Innovate & Prototype: Research and drive adoption of new infrastructure tools with a focus on reliability, security, and enterprise-grade scale
- Lead in architecture reviews, code reviews, and technology evaluation
- Own and develop cloud-based services end-to-end, including infrastructure as code
- Proficiency with Python, Go, and infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform
- Design and build software solutions for efficient organization, storage, and retrieval of data to enable substantial scale
- Build an MLOps platform primarily using Kubeflow, Kubernetes, and other ML ecosystem tools for a unified ML development experience
- Apply cloud engineering and security best practices to build robust, scalable infrastructure for ML capabilities
- Work with multi-functional teams to deliver scalable, secure, and reliable solutions
- Effectively engage with data scientists, ML engineers, PMs, and architects in requirements elaboration and drive technical solutions
- Build systems and dashboards to monitor service health and performance
- Research, evaluate, prototype, and drive adoption of new platform tools and technologies with reliability and scale in mind
- Understand and support the implementation of agentic AI systems; familiarity with LangChain and LangSmith is preferred
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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