Senior Active Defense Engineer

Workday, Inc.; Reston, Northern (VA, KY); Hybrid; USD 167,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday, Inc. is seeking a Principal Active Defense Engineer to set the technical direction for threat detection and lead multi-system initiatives from concept to production.

This hands-on role emphasizes detections-as-code, CI/CD tooling, and mentor-mentee growth across the security engineering team. You will apply AI-assisted analysis and agents to detection work, partner with incident response and security tooling, and shape the future of Workday's Active Defense platform from Reston, VA.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in detection or security engineering at production scale.
• Experience leading multi-system initiatives as an individual contributor.
• Proficiency in Python, Java, Kotlin, Scala, or JavaScript for detection/automation.
• Experience architecting a detections-as-code pipeline or production data pipeline.
• Experience applying generative AI or AI agents in security engineering.
• Experience with SIEM platforms like Splunk and cloud security.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for the detection portfolio and platform.
• Serve as the senior reviewer for infrastructure changes and complex detections.
• Lead large initiatives from concept to production, including playbooks and validation.
• Advance the detections-as-code lifecycle, CI/CD tooling, and curated datasets.
• Mentor engineers through design and code reviews to scale delivery.
• Determine where AI, agents, and automation belong in detection work.

Skills

Detection engineering

Technical leadership

Software development

Detections-as-code

AI in security

Cloud platforms

Tools

Splunk

CI/CD tooling

AI-assisted tools

Job description

Workday, Inc. is seeking a Principal Active Defense Engineer to set the technical direction for threat detection and lead multi-system initiatives from concept to production.

This hands-on role emphasizes detections-as-code, CI/CD tooling, and mentor-mentee growth across the security engineering team. You will apply AI-assisted analysis and agents to detection work, partner with incident response and security tooling, and shape the future of Workday's Active Defense platform from Reston, VA.