Senior/Principal Forward Deployed Engineer, AI Products

Workday, Inc. (old); Pleasanton (CA); Hybrid; USD 176,000 - 264,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday, Inc. in Pleasanton, CA, is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to deploy and optimize AI products for key customers. You will work with product and engineering teams to run EA programs, tailor deployments to real customer environments, and drive early customer success, with travel up to 20% to customer sites.

The role emphasizes hands-on exploration, rapid iteration, and close collaboration with partners across HR, Finance, and IT to shape product improvements for real-world usage.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in product management or related roles in complex enterprise settings.
• Willingness to travel up to 20% to customer sites.
• Experience at Senior/Principal level in enterprise SaaS deployments.

Responsibilities

• Lead customer discovery to understand goals and success metrics.
• Act as day-to-day lead for design partners and EA customers: set expectations and manage relationships.
• Run EA deployments end to end: implement, configure, debug, and iterate with customer feedback.
• Interpret tenant data, configuration, and workflows to evaluate agent performance.
• Triangulate issues, classify as bugs or config gaps, and route with urgency.
• Keep customers and internal teams updated on status, risks, and next steps.
• Turn customer feedback into clear problem statements and reproduction details for action.
• Help define pre-GA gates and graduation scorecards for the product.
• Build playbooks, configuration patterns, and known-issue guides for scaling deployments.
• Partner with product managers and Workday Services leads on each project.
• Stay engaged through early GA and remain a point of contact for major customers.

Skills

Senior PM experience

Enterprise SaaS deployments

AI/ML deployments

Customer-facing programs

Job description

Workday AI Products Team - Growth & Culture

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

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.

In this role, you will:

• Lead customer discovery to understand each customer’s goals and what success looks like for them.
• Act as the day‑to‑day lead for design partners and EA customers: setting and resetting expectations, working with senior leaders across HR, Finance, and IT, and repairing relationships when a deployment hits a rough patch.
• Run EA deployments end to end: implement, configure, debug, and improve the solution through rapid iteration with direct customer feedback.
• Interpret customer tenant data, configuration, and unique workflows, and how the agent performs against them.
• Triage every issue quickly, sorting bugs from configuration issues, product gaps, and change‑management needs, prioritise them, and route each to the right owner with the right urgency.
• Keep customers and internal teams updated on status, risks, and next steps.
• Turn customer feedback into clear problem statements, reproduction details, and evidence that product and engineering can act on to make the agent more accurate and reliable.
• Help define, measure, and assess the pre‑GA stage gates and graduation scorecard for your product.
• Build playbooks, configuration patterns, and known‑issue guides, and hand them off to the teams that scale deployments and build documentation.
• Partner closely with your product’s program manager and the Workday Services lead on each customer project.
• Stay engaged through early GA until your product meets its graduation criteria, and remain a point of contact for major customers and future releases thereafter.

Basic Qualifications

• P4 (Senior) – 7+ years of experience in product management, consulting, solutions engineering, implementation, or customer support within complex enterprise environments.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 20% to customer sites as needed.
• P5 (Principal) – 10+ years of experience in technical product management, solution architecture, forward deployed engineering, enterprise implementation, or principal‑level consulting within complex enterprise SaaS ecosystems.
• Experience driving complex AI/ML, automation, or enterprise software deployments at scale with Fortune 500 executive stakeholders.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 20% to customer sites as needed.

Other Qualifications

• A demonstrated history of entrepreneurial ownership: you’ve built something from scratch, worked without a playbook, or driven an initiative end to end in an ambiguous environment, and you’re energized by figuring out the right path when one doesn’t already exist.
• Experience managing strategic customer relationships with senior leaders in key accounts — setting and resetting expectations, navigating organizational change, and rebuilding trust when a project hits a rough patch.
• 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 annualised 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. Recruiters 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. For more information regarding Workday’s comprehensive benefits, please click here.

• Primary Location: USA.CA.Pleasanton
• Primary Location Base Pay Range: $176,000 USD – $264,000 USD
• Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $148,200 USD – $264,000 USD
• Additional Considerations: If performed in Colorado, the pay range for this job is $156,000 – $234,000 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 & Diversity

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.