Senior Software Development Engineer

Workday; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday is building AI-powered platforms to transform enterprise software. As a Senior Software Development Engineer on the AI Foundations team, you will design, build, and operate backend services that host and scale AI applications across Workday products.

You will collaborate with ML engineers, implement APIs, and own services end-to-end, including deployment, monitoring, and on-call responsibilities, with emphasis on security, reliability, and performance.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software development experience with architecture, building, and scaling robust systems.
• 5+ years of Python development experience in production environments.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong understanding of object-oriented design and Python concurrency.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate core services and infrastructure for AI development, evaluation, and deployment.
• Own a significant surface area end-to-end, including production health and on-call responsibilities.
• Turn open-ended problems into scoped, sequenced work for yourself and others.
• Mentor engineers through design and code reviews and collaborate with product/research teams.

Skills

Python

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

APIs

Unix/Linux

Cloud computing

Docker Kubernetes

ETL pipelines

On-call ownership

Security & compliance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

PySpark

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

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

We're an AI platform organization. We build the platform other engineering teams use to develop, evaluate, and deploy AI systems, and we build production applications on top of it - agentic solutions alongside a broad range of classical ML.

The work spans the full applied-AI stack: model and agent development, evaluation infrastructure, serving performance and cost, and the pipelines that get it all into an enterprise product. Our systems run against real customer data, so correctness, reliability, and observability matter as much as capability.

We're hiring at senior software engineer to have someone own a significant surface area end to end - design through delivery and operation.

About the Role

As a Senior Software Development Engineer on the AI Foundations team, you will be primarily responsible for designing, building, and operating the software systems that host, run, and scale AI-powered applications at Workday. Specifically, you will:

• Work closely with machine learning engineers to write and maintain production-grade backend services that power AI-driven capabilities and agent applications
• Design and implement APIs and service integrations that enable AI capabilities to be consumed across Workday products and platforms
• Build and operate data ingestion and ETL pipelines that support AI application workflows
• Apply distributed systems principles in production to address scalability, concurrency, fault tolerance, and performance challenges
• Ensure systems meet enterprise requirements for security, privacy, robustness, and compliance
• Own services through their full lifecycle, including deployment, monitoring, debugging, and ongoing operational improvements

What you'll do

• Design, build, and operate core services and infrastructure for AI development, evaluation, and deployment
• Own a significant surface area end to end, including production health and on-call
• Turn open-ended problems into scoped, sequenced work – for yourself and for others
• Raise the bar through design and code review, and mentor engineers on the team
• Partner with product, research, and infrastructure teams on tradeoffs and roadmap

About You

You are a strong technical leader with deep Python expertise and solid software engineering skills, capable of writing beautiful, well-designed code while delivering solutions efficiently.

Basic Qualification

• 8+ years of professional software development experience, including architecting, building, and scaling secure, robust, and efficient software systems
• 5+ years of experience with Python development
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Other Qualifications

• Understanding of object-oriented design principles and ability to apply them in a Python context
• Proficiency with advanced Python concepts, such as asynchronous and concurrent programming, generators, and higher-order abstractions
• Ability to write clean, testable, and well-structured code, with high standards for clarity, aesthetics, and long-term maintainability
• Deep systems knowledge, including comfort operating in and debugging Unix/Linux environments, fluency with command-line tooling, and understanding of practical networking fundamentals
• Understanding of distributed systems concepts, including concurrency, fault tolerance, and performance tradeoffs
• Ability to design and build well-defined, stable APIs and service interfaces for consumption by other teams and systems
• Ability to build ETL pipelines that efficiently process large amounts of data using tools like PySpark.
• Proficiency with cloud and container platforms, including containerized workloads and orchestration systems (e.g., AWS or GCP, Docker, Kubernetes)

Ability to collaborate effectively across teams, working closely with other engineers w