Software Development Engineer, Payroll Development

Workday, Inc.; Auckland; Hybrid; NZD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday, Inc. is seeking a Payroll Engineer for the APAC Payroll Country Factory team. You will bridge between engineering building payroll capability and professional services implementing it for customers in APAC/ASEAN, shaping AI toolsets, and ensuring high-quality deployments.

You will align with implementers, design and deploy production-grade software, and troubleshoot issues in real-time. The role requires Workday Payroll experience and strong collaboration with cross-functional teams

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience integrating software with external systems, APIs, and enterprise data sources.

Responsibilities

• Align with implementation teams on customer projects to understand their technical environment, data, and country-specific requirements.
• Collaborate on design, build, and deployment of production-grade software and integrations inside live customer and partner environments to support Partners and/or our CX team members for new payroll deployments in new regions, not demos or proofs of concept.
• Collaborate on technical delivery end-to-end: discovery, scoping, architecture, implementation, testing, and rollout.
• Guide integration of payroll systems with customer data sources, APIs, and identity/access systems.
• Help troubleshoot and resolve implementation and production issues in real time, often in undefined problem spaces.
• Turn field learnings and recurring implementation needs into feedback that improves the core product and the AI toolset.
• Act as a trusted technical partner for implementation teams' engineering and business stakeholders.
• Work closely with product, engineering, and implementation partners across the region.
• Help train and enable the deployment toolset on new capabilities, workflows, and lessons learned from the field.
• Train Customer Experience team members in partnership with the Product Optimization and Acceleration (PAO) team on payroll functionality, deployment processes, and troubleshooting.
• Train Solution Consultants in partnership with the PAO team on payroll so they can scope, demo, and position deployment capabilities.
• Support the payroll country development team directly on product and engineering work between implementation engagements.

Skills

Software engineering

Workday Payroll

API integration

Cloud/CI-CD

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

Python

JavaScript/TypeScript

Go/Java

Job description

About the Team

You'll join the APAC Payroll Country Factory Team, the group building new native Workday payrolls across the APAC and ASEAN region. We're using AI-driven tools and processes to dramatically increase both the number and speed of countries we can bring onto Workday payroll. It's a region with enormous growth, and this team is at the center of making that growth possible for our customers.

About the Role

As a Payroll Engineer in the APAC Payroll Country Factory team, you are a key component of the Global Payroll mission: the link between the engineers building new payroll capability and the professional services and solutions teams (both Workday and Partners) implementing it for customers in each country. Your work keeps those two sides aligned and engaged, so implementations land successfully and at high quality. You'll also help shape the AI toolsets development and implementation teams rely on, feeding your field experience back in to make those tools faster and more accurate over time.

• Align with implementation teams on customer projects to understand their technical environment, data, and country-specific requirements
• Collaborate on design, build, and deployment of production-grade software and integrations inside live customer and partner environments to support Partners and/or our CX team members for new payroll deployments in new regions, not demos or proofs of concept
• Collaborate on technical delivery end-to-end: discovery, scoping, architecture, implementation, testing, and rollout
• Guide integration of payroll systems with customer data sources, APIs, and identity/access systems
• Help troubleshoot and resolve implementation and production issues in real time, often in undefined problem spaces
• Turn field learnings and recurring implementation needs into feedback that improves the core product and the AI toolset
• Act as a trusted technical partner for implementation teams' engineering and business stakeholders
• Work closely with product, engineering, and implementation partners across the region
• Help train and enable the deployment toolset on new capabilities, workflows, and lessons learned from the field
• Train Customer Experience team members in partnership with the Product Optimization and Acceleration (PAO) team on payroll functionality, deployment processes, and troubleshooting
• Train Solution Consultants in partnership with the Product Optimization and Acceleration (PAO) team on payroll so they can scope, demo, and position deployment capabilities
• Support the payroll country development team directly on product and engineering work between implementation engagements

About You

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience building, shipping, and supporting production-grade code
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
• Experience integrating software with external systems, APIs, and enterprise data sources
• 1-3+ years experience on Workday Payroll

Other Qualifications

• Comfortable writing production code in one or more languages (for example, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, or Java), with a track record of taking a project from problem to shipped solution
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and modern deployment practices such as CI/CD, containers, and infrastructure as code
• Strong communication skills, comfortable partnering directly with customer stakeholders, including people without a technical background
• Able to work independently in ambiguous, fast-changing environments
• Experience creating training content or enabling other teams, such as Customer Experience or Solution Consulting, on technical or payroll concepts
• Willing to travel or work on-site with customers as needed
• Workday certifications required: Payroll

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.

Workday Accommodations and Equality

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.

Workday is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Workday are considered without regards to age, ancestry, color, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, protected family care or medical leave status, race, religion (including beliefs and practices or the absence thereof), sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. Further, pursuant to applicable local ordinances, Workday will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. We do not accept resumes from headhunters, placement agencies, or other suppliers that have not signed a formal agreement with us.

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.