Senior Workday Security Admnistrator

Planet Group; Washington (District of Columbia); Remote; USD 125,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Planet Group is seeking a Senior Workday Security Administrator to join a direct client project on the East Coast while offering 100% remote work. The role focuses on securing Workday data, enabling AI-enabled modules like Workday Illuminate AI, and driving improvements across student, faculty, and administrative processes in a higher education setting.

You will own security design, access controls, and compliance with FERPA/HIPAA, while collaborating with business units to deliver scalable

Qualifications

• Must have Workday Student experience within Higher Ed industry.
• A bachelor's degree or equivalent in related fields; 5+ years in Higher Education Workday security and development with Extend.
• Hands-on Workday Extend, Security, and Reporting experience in a higher education environment.
• Familiarity with SoD, least-privilege, and data privacy regulations (FERPA, HIPAA preferred).

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain a secure Workday security framework including RBAC, domains, and user provisioning.
• Conduct security reviews, audits, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
• Lead development lifecycle for Workday Extend apps and IT configurations for secure, scalable solutions.
• Collaborate with HR, Finance, Student, and IT to translate business needs into secure, high-UX solutions.

Skills

Workday Security

Workday Student experience

Higher Education experience

Stakeholder engagement

Security governance

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Workday Extend

Workday Reporting

REST APIs

JSON/XML

CI/CD

Job description

Job Title: Senior Workday Security Administrator

Location: Remote

Compensation Range: $125,000 - $140,000

The Planet Group is partnering with its direct client based on the East Coast to hire on a Workday Security Administrator. This role is a permanent, direct hire position that will be 100% Remote.

This role plays a key part in optimizing Workday's capabilities to support student, faculty, and administrative needs, while partnering with stakeholders across functional teams to drive innovation, improve business processes, and safeguard critical data in a complex, dynamic higher education environment. Ensures robust data security and best practices are in place within Workday and across the university. With a focus on user experience and Workday Illuminate AI (and Agentic AI), leads AI innovation through Workday Extend applications and IT developed configuration by working in collaboration with Business Units from concept to final execution; including the development, configuration, and maintenance of Workday applications in order to support business processes. Requires creativity and expertise with the user experience to transform business requirements into designing, building, and delivering effective solutions.

Security Configuration and Access

• Own and maintain a secure and scalable Workday security framework to include integrations, role-based security, security groups, domain security policies, and business process security policies, user provisioning (authentication policy), and proxy policy to control user access and permissions.
• Conduct regular security reviews, access audits, and recommend improvements based on findings.
• Analyze and design Workday security to ensure users have the appropriate and necessary permissions to perform their job role and functions.

Auditing and Compliance

• Comply with compliance and audit requirements by conducting regular security assessments and supporting audit readiness to ensure regulatory and privacy requirements are met.
• Provide guidance on segregation of duties (SoD) and least-privilege access principles.
• Manage the monitoring controls set up to protect sensitive institutional and personal data in compliance with FERPA, HIPAA, and other applicable regulations.
• Maintain documentation related to system configurations and processes, documenting proper internal security controls.

Development, Security, and Testing

• Collaborate stakeholders across HR, Finance, Student, and IT teams to understand business needs, to identify continuous improvement opportunities for streamlining processes and operations through Workday Illuminate AI and Agentic AI, Workday Extend and other IT developed configuration, and to translate them into scalable, secure solutions for a quality user experience.
• Oversee and lead in the full development lifecycle of Workday Extend applications and other IT developed configuration to support University priorities - from requirement gathering to architecture, design, development, testing, and deployment, and post-implementation support.
• Ensure adherence to Workday best practices and maintain high performance and scalability of Extend apps and other IT developed configuration.
• Support functionality design, testing, and migration along with and as it relates to Workday development and security and create and update reports as operationally needed.

Adoption and Support

• Serve as the primary liaison with Workday Security community forums to stay abreast of Workday releases and functionality, product updates, best practices, changing development capabilities, evolving security trends, and emerging issues relevant to higher education.
• Adhere to and align with best practices for Workday governance, release management, and change control in pursuit of institutional goals.
• Research and recommend enhancements to maximize the capabilities of the system.

• Develop and maintain a Workday roadmap for security and IT developed solutions that is aligned with business objectives and with respect to releases, reviewing release notes, and assessing and understanding the impacts on security in the tenants.
• Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, responsibility, collaboration, communication, and continuous improvement.
• Participate in Change Control process with functional areas to review, approve and execute change requests related to Workday applications, IT developed configurations, and Workday Security.

Required Skills and Qualifications:

• Must have Workday Student experience within Higher Ed industry
• A bachelor's degree and/or equivalent experience in fields related to business administration, information technology, computer science, or software development; including 5 or more years of experience in Higher Education with Workday security and development that includes Workday Extend; minimum of 3 years technical experience with Workday related to functionality of Finance, Human Capital Management, Adaptive, and Student modules.
• Familiarity with higher education processes and best practices.
• Experience in designing, configuring, testing, and supporting functional areas, including processdocumentation.
• Hands-on experience with Workday Extend, all aspects of Workday Security, Business Processes, Workday Reporting and other core Workday functionality in a higher education environment.
• Workday certifications in Extend, Security, or Integration, Business Process and Report Writer preferred.
• Familiarity with JSON, REST APIs, and strong understanding of object-oriented programming XML, XSLT, JSON, and API technologies and Workday Report Writer.
• Knowledge of ITIL, Agile, SDLC, DevOps, and CI/CDmethodologies.

• Experience supporting multiple priorities and projects concurrently. Must be able to thrive in a demanding, change-oriented, fast-pacedenvironment.
• Understanding project management and service life cycle concepts and practices.
• Proven experience collaborating with cross-functional Workday teams.
• Excellent communication, leadership, and stakeholder engagement skills.

• Background in SOX compliance, GDPR, or other data privacy regulations, preferred.