Principal Forward Deployed Engineer – Developer Platform

Workday, Inc.; Pleasanton (CA); Hybrid; USD 206,000 - 310,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday, Inc. in Pleasanton, CA, USA, is seeking a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer for the Developer Platform FDE team. You will architect, build, deploy, and optimize custom AI agents and agentic apps inside live customer environments, often with executive-level customer interactions.

You will partner with product and engineering to shape platform direction and provide field-driven insights. You will collaborate across Workday’s AI product areas, guiding engagements with enterprise

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Technical Consulting, or Software Development.
• Hands-on coding and debugging skills (e.g., Python, Java), with deep knowledge of REST APIs, OO design, system architecture, and integration patterns.
• Travel willingness to up to 20% to customer sites.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, deploy, and debug custom AI agents and agentic apps to solve enterprise problems, often with live data and security configurations.
• Lead technical discovery sessions with senior leaders, translating requirements into enterprise-grade builds.
• Provide feedback to product and engineering teams to improve the developer toolkit.
• Turn field insights into standardized, out-of-the-box product capabilities and reference architectures.
• Lead the agent-development workstream and mentor fellow engineers across projects.

Skills

Enterprise tech experience

Executive customer engagement

Python/Java

Communication

Product thinking

Collaborative leadership

Ambiguity tolerance

Developer tools/SDKs

Tools

Python

Java

REST APIs

Workday Extend

A2A/MCP knowledge

Agent frameworks

Job description

Workday, Inc. in Pleasanton, CA, USA, is seeking a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer for the Developer Platform FDE team. You will architect, build, deploy, and optimize custom AI agents and agentic apps inside live customer environments, often with executive-level customer interactions.

You will partner with product and engineering to shape platform direction and provide field-driven insights. You will collaborate across Workday’s AI product areas, guiding engagements with enterprise