Senior Software Engineer (Distributed Systems)

Workday; Ireland; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday is seeking a senior software engineer with a distributed systems background to join the Data Platform and Observability team. You will design, build and operate large-scale distributed services, including Kafka, Redis and RabbitMQ, across public and private clouds.

The role requires hands-on development and DevOps experience, with Kubernetes, OpenStack and Helm/ArgoCD. You will lead features from conception to deployment and collaborate across engineering teams to improve performance and

Qualifications

• Senior software engineer with distributed-systems background.
• Experience deploying large-scale NoSQL and messaging systems.
• 6+ years software engineering; 4+ years distributed systems.
• Experience with EU Sovereign Cloud or regulated cloud environments preferred.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core distributed services for streaming, messaging, and caching.
• Lead deployment of Kafka, Redis, RabbitMQ clusters at scale.
• Develop observability modules and dashboards for production systems.
• Operate and optimize services across AWS, GCP, and private clouds.
• Participate in on-call rotations and ensure resiliency.

Skills

Distributed systems

Kafka

Redis

RabbitMQ

Java/Scala

Golang

Kubernetes

OpenStack

Helm

ArgoCD

Chef

CI/CD

Linux tuning

DevOps

Security/compliance

EU Sovereign Cloud

Tools

Kubernetes

OpenStack

Helm

ArgoCD

Chef

Job description

• Data Platform and Observability team is based in Pleasanton,CA, Atlanta, GA, Dublin, Ireland and Chennai, India
• Our focus is on the development of large scale distributed data systems to support critical Workday products and provide real-time insights across Workday’s platforms, infrastructure and applications
• The team provides platforms that process 100s of terabytes of data that enable core Workday products and use cases like core HCM, Fins, AI/ML skus, internal data products and Observability. If you enjoy writing efficient software or tuning and scaling large distributed systems you will enjoy working with us
• The Messaging, Streaming and Caching team is a full-service Distributed Systems Engineering team. We architect and provide async messaging, streaming, and NoSQL platforms and solutions that power the Workday products and SKUs ranging from core HCM, Fins, Integrations, and AI/ML
• We develop client libraries and SDK’s that make it easy for teams to build Workday products. We develop automation to deploy and run hundreds of clusters, and we also operate and tune our clusters as well
• As a team member you will play a key role in improving our services and encouraging their adoption within Workday’s infrastructure both in our private cloud and public cloud
• As a member of this team you will design and build new capabilities from inception to deployment to exploit the full power of the core middleware infrastructure and services, and work hand in hand with our application and service teams!
• Design, build, and enhance critical distributed services, including Kafka, Redis, RabbitMQ etc
• Design, develop, build, deploy and maintain core distributed services using a combination of open source and proprietary stacks across diverse infrastructure environments (Kubernetes, OpenStack, Bare Metal, etc.)
• Design and develop core software modules for streaming, messaging and caching
• Construct observability modules, alerts and automation for Dashboard lifecycle management for the distributed services
• Build, deploy and operate infrastructure components in production environments
• Champion all aspects of streaming, messaging and caching with a focus on resiliency and operational excellence
• Evaluate and implement new open-source and cloud-native tools and technologies as needed
• Participate in the on-call rotation to support the distributed systems platforms
• Manage and optimize Workday distributed services in AWS, GCP & Private cloud env

You are a senior software engineer with a distributed systems background and significant experience in distributed systems products like Kafka, Redis, RabbitMQ or Zookeeper. You have independently led product features and deployed on large scale NoSQL clusters1+ year of leading a NoSQL technology related product right from conception to deployment and maintenance4+ years of distributed systems experience6+ years of software engineering experience using one or more of the following: Java/Scala, Golang3+ years of development and DevOps experience in designing and operating large-scale deployments of distributed NoSQL & messaging systems6+ years of experiences as a Kafka, Redis or RabbitMQ Admin with cloud platform experienceCandidates with experience supporting EU Sovereign Cloud (EU-SOV) or other regulated cloud environments are highly preferredConsistent track record of technical project leadership and success involving collaborators and interested partners across the enterpriseStrong written and oral communication skills and the ability to explain esoteric technical details clearly to engineers without a similar backgroundExpertise with configuration management using Chef and service deployment on Kubernetes via Helm and ArgoCDHands-on experience with atleast one or more distributed systems technologies like Kafka/RabbitMQ, Redis, CassandraExperience with distributed system performance analysis and optimizationPreferred Experience – EU Sovereign Cloud (EU-SOV)Expertise in developing distributed system software and deployments that perform well and degrade gracefully under excessive loadExtensive experience with modern software development tools including CI/CD and methodologies like AgileExperience learning complex open source service internals via code inspectionExperience with Linux system internals and tuningOperating production workloads in sovereign, government, or regulated cloud environmentsManaging Kafka, Redis and RabbitMQ in environments with strict data residency, compliance, and security requirementsImplementing platform security controls, including IAM, RBAC, TLS, encryption, certificate management, and secrets managementSupporting compliance initiatives such as GDPR, ISO 27001, SOC 2, or similar regulatory frameworksCollaborating with Security, Compliance, and Infrastructure teams to prepare for audits and maintain operational complianceSupporting disaster recovery, business continuity, and operational resilience for mission-critical distributed platforms