Director of Global Workday Architecture

Alvarez & Marsal; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 190,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare plans

401(k)

Paid time off

Sick time

Holidays

Floating holiday

Parental leave

Job summary

Alvarez & Marsal in Chicago seeks a Director, People Technology Architecture to own Workday platform architecture and the technical roadmap. You will lead global design, build scalable solutions, and partner with PDAR and IT stakeholders to consolidate HR tools into Workday as the single source of truth.

This hands-on leader will mentor a growing architecture practice while delivering architecture for multi-country Workday expansions, including Extend, Orchestrate, Prism, and Build capabilities.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in Workday configuration, architecture, or platform leadership; depth of experience matters more than tenure.
• End-to-end Workday platform expertise across multiple modules; HCM core, Payroll, and Integrations required; Extend, Prism, or Orchestrate strongly preferred.
• Proven experience designing and governing integration architecture at enterprise scale using Workday Studio, EIB, Core Connectors, and REST/SOAP APIs.
• Track record of owning a technology roadmap - translating business strategy into platform decisions with clear sequencing and trade-offs.
• Demonstrated experience leading HR technology consolidation or tool rationalization initiatives - reducing point solutions and driving toward a unified platform architecture.
• Experience with global or multi-country Workday implementations; understanding of international HCM, global payroll architecture, and cross-border data considerations required.
• Hands-on experience with Workday AI or automation capabilities, or demonstrated ability to rapidly build expertise in emerging platform features.
• Player-coach orientation: comfortable delivering hands-on technical work while leading and growing a team.
• Strong communication skills - able to simplify complexity for non-technical stakeholders without losing precision.
• Experience influencing cross-functional partners (Finance, IT, Payroll, HR) without direct authority.
• Experience in a complex, matrixed, professional services or consulting environment preferred.
• Workday Pro certification or equivalent deep functional certification preferred]
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Responsibilities

• Owns end-to-end Workday platform architecture across all active modules and drives standards for configuration, design, and governance across the People Tech function - built for scale from the start.
• Leads architectural design for new module rollouts and platform expansions including Workday Extend, Orchestrate, Prism, and Build technologies.
• Serves as the technical authority and escalation point for complex cross-module design decisions.
• Establishes architectural documentation standards, design review processes, and runbooks that reduce technical debt, eliminate single points of failure, and reduce contractor dependency.
• Designs Workday architecture with global scale as a first principle - ensuring configuration, security, business processes, and integrations are built to support new geographies, entities, and workforce segments without re-architecture, with governance frameworks that allow local variation while maintaining platform integrity.
• Leads the architectural strategy to rationalize and consolidate fragmented HR tools into Workday - systematically assessing the current landscape to identify tools that can be retired, replaced, or absorbed into native capabilities, and establishing Workday as the firm's single source of truth for people data.
• Defines the consolidation roadmap in partnership with the Global People Technology Leader - sequencing migrations and retirements in a way that is practical, low-risk, and aligned to business priorities.
• Partners with IT, Finance, and business stakeholders to build the business case for tool rationalization initiatives and drive alignment on consolidation decisions.
• Designs Workday architecture that proactively closes the gaps that currently require third-party tools - leveraging Extend, Orchestrate, and emerging AI capabilities to deliver functionality natively where possible.
• Ensures data consistency and integrity as systems are consolidated - defining migration patterns, data validation standards, and cutover approaches that protect data quality throughout.
• Defines and owns the People Technology roadmap across Workday and adjacent platforms, aligned to A&M's global growth strategy and platform consolidation objectives.
• Leads evaluation and adoption of emerging Workday capabilities - Agentic AI, Extend, Prism, Orchestrate, and Build - scoping use cases, designing pilots, and translating them into sequenced roadmap items that reduce dependency on external tools.
• Partners with the People Data, Analytics and Reporting (PDAR) team on the enterprise data warehouse initiative to ensure Workday data representation, pipeline architecture, and people data governance are designed correctly from the start.
• Owns integration architecture across Workday and key enterprise systems including SAP, ADP Global Payroll, and the enterprise data warehouse - designing for reliability, scalability, and global coverage.
• Designs integration patterns, orchestration standards, and governance frameworks that enable scale and reduce fragility as the global footprint expands.
• Partners with the Integration Lead and integration developer team to ensure architecture translates to reliable, maintainable builds.
• Leads architectural decisions for net-new integrations as scope expands to third-party applications, global payroll providers, and international platforms.
• Architects integration solutions that support multi-country operations, international data privacy requirements, and cross-entity data flows as A&M's global presence grows.
• Partners with regional HR and IT stakeholders to translate local requirements into scalable global architecture decisions, and leads multi-country Workday expansion initiatives - including international HCM, global payroll, and cross-border data flows.
• Builds architecture that anticipates growth: designs today’s solutions with tomorrow’s scale in mind, avoiding short-term configurations that create long-term technical debt.
• Hires and onboards senior team members and defines the architecture practice operating model.
• Mentors HRIS Analysts and Integration Developers - building technical depth across the function beyond the architecture lane.
• Acts as primary technical partner to the Global People Technology Leader, Director HRIS, and PDAR Leader on all architectural decisions.
• Represents People Technology in enterprise initiatives - data warehouse, SAP rollout, ADP Payroll, and global expansion programs.
• Translates complex technical architecture into clear narratives for business stakeholders and executive sponsors.
• Maintains active engagement in the Workday Community including release reviews, forums, and emerging capability brainstorms.

Skills

Workday architecture

Integration design

HR technology consolidation

Data warehouse

Global scale

Mentoring

Tools

Workday Extend

Orchestrate

Prism

Build technologies

Workday Studio

EIB

Core Connectors

REST/SOAP APIs

SAP

ADP Global Payroll

Job description

Alvarez & Marsal in Chicago seeks a Director, People Technology Architecture to own Workday platform architecture and the technical roadmap. You will lead global design, build scalable solutions, and partner with PDAR and IT stakeholders to consolidate HR tools into Workday as the single source of truth.

This hands-on leader will mentor a growing architecture practice while delivering architecture for multi-country Workday expansions, including Extend, Orchestrate, Prism, and Build capabilities.