Principal/Senior AI Engineer

HR Tech Job; Atlanta (GA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday is seeking a Principal/Senior AI Engineer within the Agent Factory to drive end-to-end system design, implementation, and product integration for intelligent agents on Workday’s platform.

You’ll translate cutting-edge AI capabilities into scalable business value, while ensuring data privacy, guardrails, and reliability in a global production environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with distributed systems, cloud computing, and API design.
• Experience leading end-to-end AI/ML engineering initiatives.
• Strong collaboration across product, security, and governance.

Responsibilities

• Design and own end-to-end architecture for agent-based AI systems.
• Integrate AI capabilities safely into production software.
• Implement guardrails for data privacy, explainability, and reliability.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud computing

API design

Leadership

Job description

Your work days are brighter here.

We're obsessed with making hard work pay off, for our people, our customers, and the world around us. As a Fortune 500 company and a leading AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, we're shaping the future of work so teams can reach their potential and focus on what matters most. The minute you join, you'll feel it. Not just in the products we build, but in how we show up for each other. Our culture is rooted in integrity, empathy, and shared enthusiasm. We're in this together, tackling big challenges with bold ideas and genuine care. We look for curious minds and courageous collaborators who bring sun-drenched optimism and drive. Whether you're building smarter solutions, supporting customers, or creating a space where everyone belongs, you'll do meaningful work with Workmates who've got your back. In return, we'll give you the trust to take risks, the tools to grow, the skills to develop and the support of a company invested in you for the long haul. So, if you want to inspire a brighter work day for everyone, including yourself, you've found a match in Workday, and we hope to be a match for you too.

About the Team

Agent Factory is where Workday's next chapter gets built. We're forming small, senior, cross-functional AI teams that bring together product leaders, machine learning engineers, and full-stack builders to create intelligent agents used by millions of people every day. This is production-grade AI - deeply embedded into Workday's platform, not research experiments or maintenance work. Teams own problems end to end, collaborate tightly across disciplines, and use the right tools to solve real customer challenges at global scale. You'll work at the intersection of AI, platform architecture, and human workflows, with the autonomy to shape how agents reason, act, and scale responsibly. High trust, high expectations, and real impact. Engineering, but brighter.

About the Role

As a Principal/Senior AI Engineer in Agent Factory, you will drive the end-to-end system design, implementation, and product integration for a core domain of Workday's next generation of intelligent agents. While our ML Engineers focus on building, training, and optimizing foundational algorithms, your mission is intelligence orchestration and product delivery - connecting the brain to the product.

Sitting at the intersection of AI capabilities, enterprise platforms, and human workflows, you will develop and integrate foundational models safely and reliably into functional, production-grade software. You will be hands-on in the design, experimentation, and orchestration of complex agentic workflows, translating cutting-edge AI capabilities into scalable business value. Because these agents interact with sensitive HR and financial data at a global scale, you will be a key contributor to Responsible and Governed AI - implementing strict guardrails for data privacy, predictability, and explainability within your pod. This role requires a balance of domain-level system architecture and rigorous execution, solving critical product constraints like latency, cost, and reliability.

About You

P5, Principal AI Engineer

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud computing, and API design, plus 2+ years of dedicated focus