The role
From Workday's own posting.
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
Product Engineering builds the end‑to‑end product experiences that Workday customers use. Many of these experiences are now powered by agents and AI, which depend on a strong API foundation.
This role sits in Product Engineering but operates across product pillars. You will work closely with Product Engineering teams as well as partner organizations. You will shape the API foundation, architecture and operating model that makes it easy for Product Engineering to build agent‑ready, high‑quality APIs.
About the Role
As a Software Development Engineer in Product Engineering, you will help build and maintain the APIs and backend services that sit on the critical path for Workday products and agentic experiences. You will work with technologies such as TypeScript/Python and Workday frameworks to develop scalable, resilient distributed systems and great internal developer experiences.
Your work will directly impact how quickly Workday can build, deploy, and iterate on agent‑driven capabilities for customers.
What you’ll do
Design, develop, and maintain product APIs and backend services.
Implement robust API behaviors including routing, validation, authentication/authorization, transformation, and error handling.
Contribute to high‑throughput, low‑latency components and integrations, focusing on resiliency, scalability, and fault tolerance.
Apply API contract and governance practices using OpenAPI/Swagger and internal standards.
Build and improve frameworks and tooling used by Product Engineering teams to define, publish, and maintain APIs (REST, SOAP, Graph, etc.).
Use observability (metrics, tracing, logging) to understand behavior in production and drive performance and reliability improvements.
Write clean, well‑documented, and testable code; contribute unit, integration, and contract tests.
Participate in design and code reviews; share knowledge through documentation, talks, and mentoring.
Own small to medium services or API areas end‑to‑end — from design and implementation through rollout, monitoring, and support.
Collaborate with partners in other Workday code service and agent development teams.
About You
Basic Qualifications
Minimum of 5 years of experience in software engineering building scalable backend services or platforms.
Minimum of 3 years of experience with TypeScript or Python or similar languages.
Minimum of 2 years of experience with web service/API technologies such as REST, SOAP, JSON, XML Schema, WSDL, GraphQL, etc.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Other Qualifications
Demonstrated proficiency with modern AI‑assisted development tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate high‑quality software delivery.
Solid algorithmic thinking (e.g., hash maps, trees, graph traversal, caching strategies) applied to routing, query planning, or data transformation.
Familiarity with distributed systems concepts: concurrency/multithreading, horizontal scaling, high availability, and fault tolerance.
Understanding of typical API gateway responsibilities: routing, validation, authentication, throttling/rate limiting, transformation, and security policies.
Experience with API specifications and lifecycle (OpenAPI/Swagger, versioning, documentation).
Good understanding of testing methodologies (unit, integration, contract, performance) and tools such as JUnit, ScalaTest, Postman, Mockito, and coverage tools.
Experience with source control and modern dev tooling (Git/GitHub, Gradle, CI, debugging, profiling).
Exposure to cloud‑based development (e.g., AWS, Kubernetes) is a plus.
Familiarity with MCP or similar integration models is a plus.
Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindset; comfortable working with teams across time zones.
Curiosity about agentic AI and interest in building APIs that power AI‑driven workflows.
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 accommoda