Workday

Software Development Engineer

Workday$148K — $222K *
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent experience.
  • 5+ years in software engineering with a focus on backend microservice architectures.
  • 5+ years of proficiency in Java or Kotlin, with experience in Spring Boot; Go is a plus.
  • 5+ years of experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure cloud platforms.
  • 3+ years managing production services including observability and on-call experience.

Responsibilities

  • Design and build backend microservices and developer-facing UI features end to end.
  • Develop and maintain public and internal APIs, ensuring backward compatibility and security.
  • Monitor and manage services in a cloud-native environment with metrics and alerting.
  • Incorporate AI capabilities into the platform, including real-time streaming and tooling.
  • Utilize AI tools for coding and establish practices for validating AI-generated code.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to execute technical requirements and articulate tradeoffs.
  • Enhance technical standards through code reviews, design feedback, and documentation.

Benefits

  • Flexible work schedule combining in-office and remote work.
  • Participation in Workday Bonus Plan and potential stock grants.
  • Emphasis on team connection and community during work hours.
Full Job Description
About the Team
Developer Platform is on a mission to provide the tools and services that make the Workday platform open, extensible, and AI-native giving our customers and a growing ecosystem of external developers the freedom to build whatever their business needs on top of Workday.

Within the Developer Platform, the UI and Tooling server team is the backend engineering team behind that platform. We own both sides of the developer journey: the build-time authoring experience, where developers design, validate, preview, and ship applications, and the runtime UI experience those applications deliver to their users.

Our micro-services serve massive traffic across a global, multi-region Kubernetes fleet under the availability, latency, and compliance bar that enterprise customers demand. Stability, reliability, and resiliency are not a project we run here - they are in our DNA, and they shape how we design, build, and operate every service we own.

We care deeply about developer experience, operational excellence, and using AI to remove friction in the products we ship and in the way we build them. You will own services end to end, work on distributed systems problems that are genuinely hard, and help shape how thousands of developers build on Workday's open platform.

About the Role

As an Engineer on the UI and Tooling Server team, you will design, build, and operate the backend services at the core of Workday's Developer Platform. You will work primarily across a JVM stack Java and Kotlin, Spring Boot running on AWS and Kubernetes owning features end to end - from API contract, to modern agentic user interface like A2UI, to production health.

In this role, you will:
  • Design and deliver backend microservices and developer-facing UI features end to end, taking ownership from technical design through production rollout and ongoing operational health.
  • Build and evolve well-governed public and internal APIs, applying versioning, backward compatibility, and security standards to surfaces that external developers depend on.
  • Operate what you build in a cloud-native environment - instrumenting services with metrics, logging, and SLO-based alerting, and participating in on-call to keep a multi-cluster fleet healthy.
  • Integrate AI and agentic capabilities into the platform, including large language model integrations, real-time streaming interfaces, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) based tooling.
  • Use AI-augmented development tools as a daily part of your workflow, and help establish team practices for directing, reviewing, and validating agent-generated code.
  • Partner with product managers, designers, and engineers across teams to break ambiguous requirements into well-scoped, executable work, and clearly articulate technical tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Raise the technical bar through code review, design feedback, pairing, and strong test automation, and write clear technical documentation for the features you own.


About You

Required Qualifications:
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 5+ years of software engineering with a strong focus on backend microservice architectures and distributed systems.
  • 5+ years of experience in each of the following:
    • Programming: Java or Kotlin, with production Spring Boot experience. Go is a plus.
    • Cloud platforms: AWS (preferred), GCP, or Azure.
    • Containerization and orchestration: Docker and Kubernetes.
  • 3+ years operating production services you own - including observability (metrics, logging, tracing), SLO-based alerting, and on-call.
  • Hands-on experience with AI-augmented development (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot), including the ability to direct, review, and validate agent-generated code.

Other Qualification

  • Deep backend proficiency in Java or Kotlin, with strong command of design patterns, distributed systems, and high-availability architecture.
  • A reliability mindset: you have designed for failure, capacity, and graceful degradation on services that carry real production traffic.
  • Expert API development and contract management, including versioning, backward compatibility, and familiarity with modern protocols (e.g., MCP) to support a spec-driven development approach.
  • Service ownership: end-to-end accountability for operational health, test automation, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud-native observability.
  • Hands-on experience integrating AI capabilities into software products, not only using AI tools to write code.
  • 1+ years of experience building modern frontend UIs (e.g., React, Angular, or Vue), sufficient to own a feature from API through UI.
  • Strong collaborator and communicator - able to partner with PMs, designers, and engineers to break work down and clearly articulate technical tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Experience with developer platforms, DevTools, language servers, or other core engineering platforms is a plus.


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.

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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