Forward Deployed Engineer, AI Products

Workday, Inc. (old); Pleasanton (CA); Hybrid; USD 148,000 - 222,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday, Inc. in Pleasanton, CA is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to deploy and optimize AI agents in live customer environments.

You will work alongside product and engineering teams, leading EA deployments and serving as the technical point of contact for design partners and customers. Your role includes implementing and configuring AI solutions, analyzing tenant data and workflows, and turning field feedback into actionable improvements.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in technical consulting, solutions engineering, implementation, technical product management, or customer support within enterprise software environments.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 20% to customer sites as needed.

Responsibilities

• Support customer discovery to understand goals and functional requirements for AI agent deployments
• Serve as a day-to-day technical contact for design partners and Early Access (EA) customers, maintaining clear communication and setting expectations
• Execute EA deployments end-to-end: implement, configure, and troubleshoot solutions based on ongoing customer feedback
• Analyze customer tenant data, configurations, and workflows to evaluate agent performance and behavior
• Triage issues effectively, distinguishing between bugs, configuration errors, and product gaps, and escalating to appropriate engineering teams
• Maintain clear status updates, tracking deployment risks, open technical issues, and next steps for internal and external stakeholders
• Translate customer feedback and field findings into detailed problem statements and actionable bug reports for core engineering
• Assist in evaluating pre-GA stage gates and graduation metrics to ensure product readiness
• Document deployment playbooks, repeatable configuration patterns, and troubleshooting guides to support scaling efforts
• Collaborate closely with program managers and Workday Services leads throughout customer implementations
• Support early General Availability (GA) releases until product graduation criteria are achieved

Skills

Technical consulting

Customer engagement

Solutions engineering

Implementation

Travel up to 20%

Tools

Workday

Job description

About the Team

You'll join the AI Products team, where we build Workday's AI agents from the ground up. Our mission is to bring these agents to life inside real customer environments — testing them against real data, real workflows, and real use cases. We're early in the agent lifecycle, which means the work here is hands‑on, fast‑moving, and genuinely entrepreneurial: you'll often help write the playbook for how Workday deploys a new agent, rather than follow one that already exists. If you want to be close to the product at the exact moment it's taking shape, and to see your fieldwork directly change the product, this is the team to build inside.

About the Role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work directly with some of Workday's most important early customers to deploy, configure, and improve our AI products and agents. You'll work alongside our product and engineering teams as an extension of our internal product managers, playing a central role in agent Early Access (EA) programs and running the customer deployments inside them. Your mission is to make the product better by putting it to work in a live customer environment. A successful deployment is both a win for the customer and proof that the product is improving, so making early customers successful matters just as much as hardening the agent itself. You'll often be the first person at Workday to run a deployment of a given agent, so good judgment, clear communication, ownership, and organization will matter as much as technical curiosity. Every deployment will surface something the product wasn't built for yet, so creative problem‑solving and a “yes, and” mindset are core to this role: instead of telling a customer that something isn't possible, you'll find a way to solve their use case with what exists today, bring them along on what's coming next, and turn the gap into clear feedback for product and engineering.

In this role, you will:

• Support customer discovery to understand goals and functional requirements for AI agent deployments
• Serve as a day‑to‑day technical contact for design partners and Early Access (EA) customers, maintaining clear communication and setting expectations
• Execute EA deployments end‑to‑end: implement, configure, and troubleshoot solutions based on ongoing customer feedback
• Analyze customer tenant data, configurations, and workflows to evaluate agent performance and behavior
• Triage issues effectively, distinguishing between bugs, configuration errors, and product gaps, and escalating to appropriate engineering teams
• Maintain clear status updates, tracking deployment risks, open technical issues, and next steps for internal and external stakeholders
• Translate customer feedback and field findings into detailed problem statements and actionable bug reports for core engineering
• Assist in evaluating pre‑GA stage gates and graduation metrics to ensure product readiness
• Document deployment playbooks, repeatable configuration patterns, and troubleshooting guides to support scaling efforts
• Collaborate closely with program managers and Workday Services leads throughout customer implementations
• Support early General Availability (GA) releases until product graduation criteria are achieved

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in technical consulting, solutions engineering, implementation, technical product management, or customer support within enterprise software environments
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 20% to customer sites as needed

Other Qualifications

• Proven ability to manage technical initiatives in fast‑paced or ambiguous environments with minimal direction
• Experience managing customer technical relationships, setting expectations, and resolving technical challenges collaboratively
• Working knowledge of Workday, including business processes, security and permissions, tenant configuration, integrations, and how customers implement and govern Workday, so you can read a customer's tenant and understand how the agent will behave inside it

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. Recruiter 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.

Primary Location: USA.CA.Pleasanton

Primary Location Base Pay Range: $148,000 USD - $222,000 USD

Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $123,900 USD - $222,000 USD

Additional Considerations: If performed in Colorado, the pay range for this job is $130,400 - $195,600 USD based on min and max pay range for that role if performed in CO.

The application deadline for this role is the same as the posting end date stated as below: 01/11/2027

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.

Equal Opportunity, Accommodations & Non-Discrimination

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.

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.

You may view the Workday’s Pay Transparency Policy, and Know Your Rights Notice, by clicking on their corresponding links.