Senior Software Engineer(Distributed Systems)

Workday, Inc.; Pleasanton, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 285,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday, Inc. in Pleasanton, CA seeks a Senior Software Development Engineer to own the design and execution of core components for a distributed tracing platform built on ClickHouse and Grafana Tempo, supported by a big-data pipeline (Kafka, Spark, Iceberg, S3).

This role is hands-on, tackling multi-petabyte scale challenges, optimizing low-latency infra, and laying groundwork for Observability AI. You will mentor developers, contribute to architectural discussions, and drive engineering

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software development experience.
• 4+ years designing distributed systems with high-availability and fault tolerance.
• 5+ years with two of Java, Go, Scala, Python in production distributed systems.
• Bachelor’s degree in CS/Engineering; Master’s preferred or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical design and execution for core components of the tracing platform.
• Tackle multi-petabyte scale challenges and optimize low-latency infrastructure.
• Mentor other developers and contribute to architecture decisions.
• Drive engineering excellence in ingestion, storage, and query performance.

Skills

Software development

Distributed systems design

Java

Go

Scala

Python

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Master’s degree preferred in CS/Distributed Systems

Tools

Kafka

Spark

Flink

Iceberg

S3

ClickHouse

OpenTelemetry OTLP

gRPC

REST

Git/GitHub

Job description

About the Team

The Data Platform and Observability Engineering (DPOE) team is building Workday’s next-generation, multi-petabyte scale Observability Platform. We own the libraries, distributed services, and infrastructure that power ingestion, storage, and query across the observability stack — Iceberg, ClickHouse, Tempo, Grafana, S3, Kafka, and Elasticsearch serving traces, metrics, and logs for every workload at Workday. Our roadmap directly shapes how the company detects, diagnoses, and eventually predicts operational issues at scale.

About the Role

As a Senior Software Development Engineer, you will own the technical design and execution for core components of Workday’s distributed tracing platform, built on ClickHouse and/or Grafana Tempo and backed by a big-data pipeline (Kafka, Spark/Flink, Iceberg, S3). This is a hands‑on role where you will tackle multi‑petabyte scale challenges, optimize low‑latency infrastructure, and help lay the technical groundwork for Observability AI. You will drive engineering excellence within the team, mentor other developers, and act as a domain expert for tracing ingestion, storage, and query performance.

About You

Basic Qualification

• 8+ years experience in software development engineering.
• 4+ years experience specifically focused on designing, building, and operating complex distributed system architectures, evidenced by successful deployment of systems with high availability (e.g., 99.9% uptime) and fault tolerance.
• 5+ years experience with at least two of the following programming languages Java, Go, Scala, Python, including experience in writing production‑level code for distributed systems.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline; a Master’s degree (e.g., MS in Computer Science, Distributed Systems, or related field) is strongly preferred or equivalent practical experience.

Other Qualification

• Strong ability in Algorithmic Thinking, including to build highly efficient and scalable solutions for complex high‑throughput data ingestion and sub‑second query performance challenges.
• Solid experience in API Development, including an understanding of gRPC, REST, and OpenTelemetry (OTLP), with practical experience designing and building scalable distributed APIs for observability data.
• Strong understanding of Code Testing methodologies, such as distributed load testing and integration testing, and experience contributing to end‑to‑end telemetry pipeline testing and CI/CD automation.
• Solid understanding of Distributed Systems Software principles, including data partitioning, eventual consistency, and fault tolerance mechanisms, with hands‑on experience in Kafka, Spark, Flink, or ClickHouse.
• Experience implementing and maintaining High Availability strategies for critical distributed systems, including multi‑AZ deployments, robust retry mechanisms, and automated failover.
• Practical experience with Large Scale Data Processing technologies and frameworks such as Apache Kafka, Spark, Flink, and Apache Iceberg within complex distributed architectures.
• Good understanding of Large Scale Systems design principles, including distributed data sharding, replication, and query optimization, and experience working on observability pipelines or data lake platforms.
• Strong understanding of Object‑Oriented Design (OOD) principles and architectural patterns for building highly scalable and maintainable distributed systems.
• Experience with Source Control Management (SCM) tools such as Git and GitHub/Bitbucket, and following best practices for collaborative distributed development workflows.
• Strong understanding of System Security principles and best practices relevant to securing distributed environments, including mutual TLS (mTLS), multi‑tenant authorization (authz), and data encryption.
• Proven ability to actively collaborate within and across distributed software development teams and contribute constructively to architectural discussions and system designs.
• Strong skills in creating Technical Writing Documentation for runbooks, system design specs, and API documentation related to distributed systems architecture and design.

Workday Pay Transparency Statement

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.

Primary Location: USA.CA.Pleasanton

Primary Location Base Pay Range: $190,100 USD - $285,100 USD

Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $160,100 USD - $285,100 USD

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.

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.