Sr. Software Development Engineer

Workday; Vancouver; Hybrid; CAD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday’s AI Model Serving team builds the backbone for production AI workloads, hosting thousands of ML models and enabling large language models to run at scale. As a Senior Software Development Engineer, you’ll shape the platform’s direction, mentor others, and collaborate with ML engineers and data scientists.

You’ll own design decisions, drive performance, and ensure reliability across high‑throughput systems, with opportunities to work on open‑weight LLMs, GPU orchestration on Kubernetes,

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software development in distributed systems.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field.
• Deep proficiency in Python for production systems.
• Experience deploying and scaling workloads on Kubernetes with GPU resources.
• Familiarity with LLMs and traditional ML models in production.
• Strong observability/monitoring capabilities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, mentorship abilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead technically to drive performance, reliability, and scalability across the platform.
• Design, implement, and maintain large-scale systems enabling ML models to production.
• Write design documents to build consensus for new components.
• Evaluate and adopt new technologies across the stack.
• Troubleshoot, improve, and scale CI pipelines.
• Collaborate with software engineers, ML engineers, and data scientists.
• Respond to alerts and maintain platform health and reliability.
• Review pull requests for quality, performance, and security.
• Develop documentation to share knowledge with engineers.

Skills

Distributed systems

Python

Kubernetes & GPU

LLMs & ML models

Observability

Communication

Mentorship

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Python-based frameworks

CI/CD

Job description

Your work days are brighter here. We’re obsessed with making hard work pay off, for our people, our customers, and the world around us. As a Fortune 500 company and a leading AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, we’re shaping the future of work so teams can reach their potential and focus on what matters most. The minute you join, you’ll feel it. Not just in the products we build, but in how we show up for each other. Our culture is rooted in integrity, empathy, and shared enthusiasm. We’re in this together, tackling big challenges with bold ideas and genuine care. We look for curious minds and courageous collaborators who bring sun-drenched optimism and drive. Whether you're building smarter solutions, supporting customers, or creating a space where everyone belongs, you’ll do meaningful work with Workmates who’ve got your back. In return, we’ll give you the trust to take risks, the tools to grow, the skills to develop and the support of a company invested in you for the long haul. So, if you want to inspire a brighter work day for everyone, including yourself, you’ve found a match in Workday, and we hope to be a match for you too.

About The Team

The AI Model Serving team is the engine behind every production Workday agent and machine learning use case. We own the services that power all production AI workloads, acting as both the gateway to vendor-hosted LLMs (GCP, AWS Bedrock, Gemini) and the primary platform where Workday hosts and scales its internal models.
We operate at scale, hosting thousands of traditional ML models across sharded Ray Serve clusters and maintaining Workday's production model registry.
Our platform consistently handles ~2,000 requests per second, peaking at over 10,000 RPS in our largest clusters.
In the year ahead, our engineering roadmap is highly ambitious. We are focused on:
Scaling Architecture: Upgrading our systems to seamlessly support 20+ new AI agents going into production.
Hosting Open-Weight LLMs: Designing the infrastructure to host and tune open-source LLMs directly within our stack.
Performance & Reliability: Architecting optimizations to drive down core latency while maintaining the rock-solid stability our high-throughput production systems demand.
Enterprise Governance: Hardening our unified vendor interface and implementing advanced cost-governance controls.
Our culture is built on focus, camaraderie, and high performance. We are a friendly, dedicated group that takes pride in building and operating one of the most heavily used services at Workday. If you are energized by working on the infrastructure that sits at the very heart of Workday's AI strategy, this is the team for you.

About The Role

As either a Senior Software Development Engineer on the AI Model Serving team, you will be a technical leader who helps shape the vision and direction of the platform alongside the engineering manager. You will play a central role in making critical design decisions, driving outcomes across the team, and setting a positive and inclusive team culture.
Your work will directly impact Workday's ability to serve AI at scale — from traditional ML models to the latest large language models powering Workday's agents.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the team technically by making critical design decisions that drive performance, reliability, and scalability across the platform.
• Design, implement, and maintain large-scale systems that enable moving ML models to production.
• Write design documents to build consensus for new system components and enhancements to existing components.
• Evaluate and uptake new technologies made available within Workday and across the broader industry.
• Troubleshoot, improve, and scale continuous integration software pipelines.
• Develop relationships with software engineers, machine learning engineers, and data scientists on partner teams.
• Respond to alerts and debug production issues to maintain platform health and reliability.
• Review pull requests and enforce consistency, performance, readability, and security across code bases.
• Develop documentation to share knowledge with other engineers.

About You

Basic Qualifications

• 6+ years of related work experience in software development, with a focus on building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).

Other Qualifications

• Software Development and Distributed Systems: Deep experience designing, building, and scaling production-grade distributed systems. You understand the full software development lifecycle – from coding standards and testing to code reviews, source control, and deployment, and can apply that knowledge to complex, high-throughput platforms.
• Python: Deep proficiency in Python, with extensive experience writing production-level code and building systems in Python-based frameworks.
• Kubernetes & GPU Infrastructure: Deep hands‑on experience deploying and scaling workloads on Kubernetes, with a specific focus on GPU resource management. You understand how to optimize GPU utilization for hosting and tuning smaller open-weight LLMs using modern inference engines (e.g., vLLM, TGI). Familiarity with GPU memory constraints, serving tuned models (e.g., LoRA), and autoscaling hardware metrics.
• LLMs and Traditional ML Models: Familiarity with both large language models and traditional ML models, including how they are served, scaled, and monitored in production. You understand the operational differences and can design abstractions that serve both effectively.
• Observability: You can design and maintain monitoring strategies that provide clear insight into system health, performance, and cost.
• Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to write clear design documents, articulate complex technical ideas, and build consensus across teams.
• Mentorship: A collaborative approach to engineering, with experience mentoring other engineers and fostering an inclusive team environment.

Workday Pay Transparency Statement

The annualized base salary ranges for the primary location and any additional locations are listed below. Workday pay ranges vary based on work location. As a part of the total compensation package, this role may be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role‑specific commission/bonus, as well as annual refresh stock grants. Recruiters can share more detail during the hiring process. Each candidate’s compensation offer will be based on multiple factors including, but not limited to, geography, experience, skills, job duties, and business need, among other things. For more information regarding Workday’s comprehensive benefits, please click here.
Primary Location: USA.CO.Boulder
Primary Location Base Pay Range: $156,000 USD - $234,000 USD
Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $148,200 USD - $264,000 USD
Additional Considerations:
The application deadline for this role is the same as the posting end date stated as below:
10/05/2026

Our Approach to Flexible Work

With Flex Work, we’re combining the best of both worlds: in-person time and remote. Our approach enables our teams to deepen connections, maintain a strong community, and do their best work. We know that flexibility can take shape in many ways, so rather than a number of required days in office each week, we simply spend at least half (50%) of our time each quarter in the office or in the field with our customers, prospects, and partners (depending on role). This means you'll have the freedom to create a flexible schedule that caters to your business, team, and personal needs, while being intentional to make the most of time spent together. Those in our remote "home office" roles also have the opportunity to come together in our offices for important moments that matter.
Pursuant to applicable Fair Chance law, Workday will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Workday is an Equal Opportunity Employer including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.
Workday is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals during our application process, in order to perform one or more essential functions of their job, as well as regarding the use of AI tools for employment decision-making to any degree. Please see below for more details including how to request an accommodation as a qualified veteran, due to a disability or for religious reasons, or as otherwise provided under applicable law.
Workday prohibits taking adverse action against any candidate or employee for reporting a possible violation of this policy, requesting one or more work accommodations, exercising a privacy right, or cooperating in an investigation in accordance with applicable law. Any employee who retaliates against a candidate or employee for doing so may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment, to the fullest extent allowable under applicable law.
If you require a reasonable accommodation, you may email [e-mail], as far in advance as possible.

Are you being referred to one of our roles? If so, ask your connection at Workday about our Employee Referral process!

At Workday, we value our candidates’ privacy and data security. Workday will never ask candidates to apply to jobs through websites that are not Workday Careers.
Please be aware of sites that may ask for you to input your data in connection with a job posting that appears to be from Workday but is not.
In addition, Workday will never ask candidates to pay a recruiting fee, or pay for consulting or coaching services, in order to apply for a job at Workday.