Senior Workday Payroll & Absence Automation Analyst

HR Tech Job; Pleasanton (CA); Hybrid; USD 144,000 - 216,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday in Pleasanton, CA is seeking a P4 Enterprise Applications Analyst to help shape Payroll, Absence and Time Tracking solutions. You’ll go beyond day-to-day support to influence design and product direction, piloting AI agent capabilities internally.

You’ll collaborate with partners, run discovery sessions, configure Payroll settings, test integrations, and drive adoption of AI-enabled tools. A global payroll scope and Scrum practices are expected, with flexibility in a hybrid work model.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience in business consulting, IT implementation, or customer support implementing Workday.
• 5+ years of experience with the Workday enterprise platform.
• Heavy Workday Configuration experience in Payroll (must have)
• Excellent functional knowledge of Payroll, in a global setting (US, Canada, and International payroll process and policy)
• Understanding of Workday integration technologies
• Familiarity with or strong interest in AI-driven automation/agentic capabilities within enterprise systems

Responsibilities

• Analyze functional business problems and provide guidance on defining product outcomes for the Payroll, Absence and Time Tracking product suite
• Provide technical expertise in identifying, evaluating, and developing systems and procedures that best meet business partner requirements
• Lead discovery and design sessions with business partners and other stakeholders; identify upstream/downstream impacts, dependencies, and project risks
• Configure Workday Payroll system settings and options — including AI-assisted configuration as Illuminate capabilities roll out — and plan and execute unit testing, advising teams performing integration and acceptance testing
• Evaluate, configure, and drive internal adoption of Workday Illuminate agents (e.g., Payroll Agent, absence/frontline automation) as they roll out
• Identify opportunities to apply AI/agentic automation to reduce manual payroll and absence processing, anomaly detection, and compliance checks
• Drive planning, prioritization, and deployment of projects and system enhancements across the scrum team
• Leverage business knowledge to proactively identify process improvement opportunities
• Participate in change management and go-live support processes
• Partner with the integration team on configuring and testing integrations between Workday and benefit providers, payroll systems, and other 3rd party/custom solutions

Skills

Workday configuration

Payroll

Time Tracking

AI automation

Agile / Scrum

Global payroll

Tools

Workday

Job description

Workday in Pleasanton, CA is seeking a P4 Enterprise Applications Analyst to help shape Payroll, Absence and Time Tracking solutions. You’ll go beyond day-to-day support to influence design and product direction, piloting AI agent capabilities internally.

You’ll collaborate with partners, run discovery sessions, configure Payroll settings, test integrations, and drive adoption of AI-enabled tools. A global payroll scope and Scrum practices are expected, with flexibility in a hybrid work model.