Software Development Engineer(Distributed Systems)

Workday; Pleasanton (CA); On-site; USD 148,000 - 222,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday is seeking a Software Development Engineer to build and scale core features of the distributed tracing platform. You will work with ClickHouse, Grafana Tempo, and a modern big‑data pipeline (Kafka, Spark/Flink, Iceberg, S3) on AWS to deliver high‑quality, high‑performance code for massive data loads.

This hands‑on role focuses on resilient backend services, distributed systems, and contributing to Observability AI while collaborating with Senior/Principal engineers to deepen expertise.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; Master’s preferred.
• 5+ years in software development engineering.
• 3+ years designing and operating complex distributed systems with high availability.

Responsibilities

• Develop and scale features for the distributed tracing platform.
• Maintain high-throughput data pipelines using Kafka, Spark/Flink, Iceberg-on-S3.
• Write optimized, production-grade code for large data loads.
• Ensure reliability with robust error handling, retries, and failover.
• Apply security controls for multi-tenant data access.
• Maintain platform health with monitoring, logging, and on-call rotations.
• Support Observability AI with reliable data ingestion paths.
• Document designs and participate in design reviews.

Skills

Algorithmic design

Distributed systems

API development

Testing & CI/CD

Code quality

Security & multi‑tenant

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Master’s preferred or equivalent experience

Tools

Kafka

Spark

Flink

ClickHouse

Iceberg

Tempo

gRPC/REST/OpenTelemetry

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.

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

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 Software Development Engineer, you will build and scale core features of Workday’s distributed tracing platform. Working with ClickHouse, Grafana Tempo, and a modern big-data pipeline (Kafka, Spark/Flink, Iceberg, S3) on AWS, you will deliver high-quality, high-performance code capable of handling massive data loads.

This is a hands‑on role for an engineer who excels at building resilient backend services and is eager to grow their expertise in distributed systems and big data while contributing to the future of Observability AI.

Responsibilities

• Develop the Platform: Write high-quality, well-tested code to build and scale features for the distributed tracing platform on ClickHouse/Tempo, focusing on robust ingestion and fast query execution.
• Maintain Big-Data Pipelines: Build and support high-throughput data pipelines using Kafka, Spark/Flink, and Iceberg-on-S3.
• Tune and Optimize: Write optimized code and participate in profiling and resolving latency or throughput issues in production environments.
• Ensure Reliability: Implement robust error handling, retries, and failover mechanisms to ensure high availability for tracing services.
• Secure the Data: Apply necessary security controls to ensure multi‑tenant data access is properly handled according to platform architecture.
• Operational Support: Maintain the health of the platform through comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting, and participate in the team’s on‑call rotation.
• Support Observability AI: Build reliable data ingestion paths that will serve as the foundation for AI‑driven anomaly detection and root‑cause analysis.
• Collaborate and Learn: Write clear technical documentation, participate actively in system design reviews, and work closely with Senior and Principal engineers to level up your distributed systems knowledge.

About You

Basic Qualification

5+ years experience in software development engineering.

3+ 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, Python, Go, 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 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

The annualized 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: $148,000 USD - $222,000 USD

Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $123,900 USD - $222,000 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.

Are you being referred to one of our roles? If so, ask your connection at Workday about our Employee Referral process!

At Workday, we value our candidates’ privacy and data security. Workday will never ask candidates to apply to jobs through websites that are not Workday Careers.

Please be aware of sites that may ask for you to input your data in connection with a job posting that appears to be from Workday but is not.

In addition, Workday will never ask candidates to pay a recruiting fee, or pay for consulting or coaching services, in order to apply for a job at Workday.