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
About the Role
As a Principal API Architect in Product Engineering, you'll own the API architecture vision for the organization — setting the standards, review processes, and reference architectures that guide how Product Engineering teams design and deliver APIs. You'll work closely with product and engineering leaders to turn that vision into practice across teams.
You bring deep, hands-on experience designing products end to end — from domain modeling through backend implementation, API design, and production operations. You're comfortable translating product functionality into scalable services and well-modeled API endpoints, and you treat APIs not just as technical interfaces, but as durable product contracts that reflect real product capabilities, domain concepts, and customer use cases.
Key Responsibilities:
- Define and evolve the API architecture, standards, and governance model for Product Engineering, spanning REST, GraphQL, SOAP, and emerging integration patterns used by Workday's agents and products.
- Partner with product and engineering teams to design product capabilities end to end — domain models, service boundaries, object models, and API endpoints — translating product requirements into scalable backend services and well-structured API contracts.
- Establish and maintain API standards, including OpenAPI contract guidelines, resource modeling and naming conventions, authentication and multi-tenant patterns, and error handling, versioning, and deprecation policies.
- Partner with "API champions" across product areas to shape API roadmaps, identify gaps or duplication, and drive convergence on shared patterns and building blocks.
- Define reference architectures for agent-ready APIs used by the Agent Factory, data-centric APIs that safely expose data through Data Cloud, and latency and observability standards across the request path.
- Lead cross-team API design reviews and serve as the final decision-maker on contentious or high-impact design questions.
- Shape and run a single, transparent intake and prioritization process for Product Engineering's API investments, and evaluate build/borrow/buy decisions for supporting tools such as contract testing, catalogs, and developer tooling.
- Mentor senior engineers and managers on API architecture and integration best practices, build communities of practice across Product Engineering, and communicate the API vision and progress to senior stakeholders.
About You
Basic Qualifications
- Minimum of 12 years of experience building large-scale, mission-critical backend systems and APIs; with responsibility for cross-team or organization-wide API/platform architecture
- Minimum of 7 years of experience in software engineering, with hands-on experience in object-oriented modeling and software design concepts such as domain modeling, abstraction, encapsulation, extensibility, and maintainable service design
- Minimum of 5 ears of experience designing API endpoints that expose product functionality clearly, consistently, securely, and at scale.
- Bachelor's degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
Other Qualifications
- Deep hands-on experience with object-oriented modeling and software design concepts, using Java, TypeScript or Python to build maintainable web services and APIs across REST, SOAP, JSON, XML,and Swagger/OpenAPI.
- Experience designing API endpoints that expose product functionality clearly, consistently, and securely at scale, with a proven track record of setting and driving technical standards across multiple teams.
- Experience leveraging AI‑assisted code generation and review tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) to improve development speed and quality.
- Strong expertise in distributed systems and cloud architectures, including high‑throughput, low‑latency services, horizontal scaling, and fault‑tolerant design.
- Extensive experience with edge and gateway patterns (routing, auth, throttling, rate limiting, transformation, multi‑tenant concerns).
- Demonstrated leadership in API governance: standards definition, contract review, documentation, and lifecycle management.
- Experience designing or evolving observability for APIs (metrics, tracing, logging) and using that data to define and monitor SLOs.
- Familiarity with agentic AI use cases and patterns for integrating LLMs/agents with enterprise APIs
- Experience with data platforms and analytical stores (such as Data Cloud or equivalent) and designing APIs that expose data safely and efficiently.
- Ability to collaborate and influence across Product Engineering, platform teams, and business stakeholders.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to articulate complex technical topics in simple, compelling terms.
- Passion for growing others: mentoring staff‑level engineers, supporting managers, and building a strong API culture within Product Engineering.
- Growth mindset and comfort working in evolving spaces where the operating model is still being defined.
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 .
Primary Location: USA.CA.PleasantonPrimary Location Base Pay Range: $206,400 USD - $309,600 USD
Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $173,300 USD - $309,600 USD
Additional Considerations:
If performed in Colorado, the pay range for this job is $182,400 - $273,600 USD based on min and max pay range for that role if performed in CO.
The application deadline for this role is the same as the posting end date stated as below:
10/15/2026
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.
