Workday

Senior Manager, AI Platform

Workday$184K — $276K *
Enterprise Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years leading software engineering teams, including 2+ years managing managers.
  • 10+ years in software development, evolving tools and strategies for quality delivery.
  • Bachelor's in Computer Science or related field; Master's preferred.
  • Experience with large-scale distributed systems in production.
  • Strong background in secure, multi-tenant systems with governance controls.
  • Proficient in backend architecture, service boundaries, and API contracts.
  • Skilled in driving operational reliability practices like SLOs.

Responsibilities

  • Lead the development of Workday's secure execution platform for AI agents.
  • Manage engineering teams across runtime, security, and platform interfaces.
  • Define and execute a multi-phase roadmap for the runtime.
  • Ensure high engineering quality in security, reliability, and observability.
  • Drive clear interface contracts across platform components.
  • Align technical direction with business priorities through partnership.
  • Establish measurable metrics for latency, resilience, and compliance.

Benefits

  • Flexible work environment promoting in-office and remote work balance.
  • Opportunity for career development and coaching for engineers.
  • Access to a robust bonus plan and potential stock grants.
  • Engagement in cross-functional collaborative projects.
  • Support for creating an inclusive engineering culture.
Full Job Description
About the Team
The Agent Runtime team is responsible for Workday's next-generation secure runtime for AI agents. The team builds the execution substrate that enforces policy by architecture, not by prompt, and provides deterministic controls for data access, tool usage, and model routing.

The team owns core runtime capabilities including cell lifecycle orchestration, sandbox boundaries, policy enforcement interfaces, observability hooks, and audit-ready execution traces. We work closely with partner teams across ML Data Engineering, ML Core, Information Retrieval, CIS, and Cloud Platform to deliver a modular, high-scale platform that supports multiple languages and agent frameworks over time.

This is a high-impact platform team operating at the intersection of distributed systems, security, and AI infrastructure, with direct influence on Workday's enterprise AI strategy and customer trust posture.

About the Role

As Senior Manager of Software Development Engineering for Agent Runtime, you will lead the team building Workday's secure execution platform for enterprise AI agents. This platform is core to Workday's strategy for policy-governed, least-privilege, and auditable AI execution at scale.

You will manage engineers across runtime, security, and platform interfaces, and drive delivery of a multi-team roadmap spanning maincar/sidecar architecture, policy enforcement, model mediation, and auditability. You will partner closely with other teams at Workday to deliver deterministic controls and production-grade reliability.

In this role, you will:
  • Own delivery for Agent Runtime from architecture definition through production scale.
  • Build and develop a high-performing engineering organization, including hiring, coaching, and performance management.
  • Define execution strategy, milestones, and operating rhythms for a multi-phase runtime roadmap.
  • Ensure strong engineering quality in security, reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
  • Drive clear interface contracts and ownership boundaries across platform components.
  • Partner with product and architecture leadership to align technical direction with business priorities.
  • Establish measurable SLOs and engineering metrics for latency, throughput, resilience, and compliance readiness.
  • Create an inclusive, accountable engineering culture focused on customer trust and execution excellence.


About You

Basic Qualifications:
  • 5+ years experience leading and developing software development engineering teams, including 2+ years managing other development managers.
  • 10+ years experience in software development engineering, defining, implementing, and evolving development processes, tools, and strategies for high-quality software delivery.


Other Qualifications:
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline; Master's degree preferred or equivalent practical experience.
  • Proven success leading large-scale distributed systems or platform runtime teams in production environments.
  • Experience building secure, multi-tenant systems with strong governance, audit, and policy controls.
  • Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional engineering programs spanning multiple partner organizations.
  • Strong technical depth in backend/platform architecture, service boundaries, and API/interface contracts.
  • Experience driving reliability practices, including SLOs, incident response, and operational maturity.
  • Track record of hiring and developing top engineering talent and building high-performing organizations.
  • Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence technical and executive stakeholders.


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.CO.Boulder

Primary Location Base Pay Range: $184,000 USD - $276,000 USD

Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $174,800 USD - $314,400 USD

Additional Considerations:

The application deadline for this role is the same as the posting end date stated as below:

06/30/2026

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.

About Workday

Workday, Inc. is a provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources. The Company delivers financial management, human capital management and analytics applications designed for various companies, educational institutions and government agencies. As part of its applications, the Company provides embedded analytics that capture the content and context of everyday business events, facilitating informed decision-making from wherever users are working. Its applications include Workday Financial Management, Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) and Other Applications. It also provides open, standards-based Web-services application programming interfaces, and pre-built packaged integrations and connectors. Workday, Inc. is headquartered in Pleasanton, California.
Learn more about Workday
Size
15,932 employees
Market Cap
$42.2 billion
Industry
Net Income
-$282.4 million
Founded
2005
5 Year Trend
+26.7%
Revenue
$4.3 billion
NASDAQ

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