Principal Software Development Engineer

Your work days are brighter here.

Were 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 were shaping the future of work so teams can reach their potential and focus on what matters most. The minute you join youll 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. Were 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 youre building smarter solutions supporting customers or creating a space where everyone belongs youll do meaningful work with Workmates whove got your return well 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 youve found a match in Workday and we hope to be a match for you too.

About the Team

About the Role

As a Principal Software Engineer you will shape the technical direction and long-term architecture of Workdays multi-cloud platform. You will lead the design of large-scale distributed systems drive cross-team initiatives and influence platform strategy across the organization.

This role requires deep expertise in distributed systems and cloud infrastructure combined with the ability to provide sound technical solutions to meet business requirements solve complex technical challenges and drive alignment across multiple teams.

What Youll Do

• Lead the architecture design and evolution of multi-cloud platform services ensuring they are secure scalable and highly available.

• Design and deliver large-scale resilient distributed systems that support mission-critical workloads with strong performance and reliability guarantees.

• Drive cross-organizational technical strategy and initiatives to improve reliability scalability performance and operational excellence across the platform.

• Identify define and drive solutions for complex ambiguous platform challenges that span multiple teams domains and services.

• Establish and champion best practices for distributed systems design reliability observability and automation and ensure they are adopted across engineering teams.

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to senior and staff engineers raising the overall technical bar and fostering a culture of engineering excellence.

• Improve end-to-end observability reliability and automated recovery for platform services including proactive detection self-healing and robust incident response.

• Accelerate onboarding of new customers regions and products through automation standardization and repeatable platform patterns.

• Drive cloud efficiency and infrastructure optimization at scale including cost optimization capacity planning and effective use of cloud-native capabilities.

About You

Basic Qualifications:

• 12 years building large-scale distributed systems or infrastructure platforms

• 10 years of experience with public cloud platforms (AWS GCP Azure or Oracle) at scale

• 8 years of production grade expertise with Kubernetes and the CNCF ecosystem

• 10 years of proven experience designing scalable and resilient distributed systems

• 5 years of development experience in Go

• 5 years of experience with Python Ruby or Linux-based automation/scripting

Other Qualifications:

• Experience building internal platforms used by multiple engineering teams

• Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure (networking storage compute)

• Experience leading large multi-quarter cross-organizational technical initiatives

• Strong background in automation CI/CD and platform engineering

• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction without direct authority

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 candidates 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 Workdays comprehensive benefits please click here.

Our Approach to Flexible Work

With Flex Work were 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 youll 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.

At Workday we are committed to providing an accessible and inclusive hiring experience where all candidates can fully demonstrate their skills. If you require assistance or an accommodation at any point please email .

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