Workday

Sr Principal AI Engineer

Workday$274K — $412K *
Enterprise Technology
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 12+ years in product engineering for highly available cloud products
  • 7+ years in AI, machine learning, or intelligent automation focusing on enterprise applications
  • Deep understanding of LLMs, AI agents, and orchestration frameworks
  • Experience with enterprise-grade AI architectures and API integration
  • Proficiency in Python and cloud AI services (AWS, Azure, GCP)
  • Strong problem-solving and business needs translation skills
  • Knowledge of data privacy, security, and compliance in enterprise AI environments

Responsibilities

  • Architect AI-powered agents for HR and Financial workflows
  • Comprehend the AI system lifecycle from definition to validation
  • Evaluate and integrate AI tools and frameworks for scalability
  • Stay current with AI advancements to drive innovation
  • Define best practices for AI agent design and governance
  • Collaborate with product and engineering teams on AI automation solutions
  • Develop strategies for multi-agent collaboration in business processes
  • Identify opportunities to embed AI in the Workday platform
  • Partner with AI vendors and open-source communities to enhance technologies
  • Establish monitoring and feedback mechanisms for agent performance

Benefits

  • Flexible work approach combining in-person and remote work
  • Opportunity for team connection and community building
  • Half of the time (50%) spent each quarter in the office or field
  • Flexibility to design personal schedules while meeting business needs
  • Opportunity to participate in important in-office moments
Full Job Description

About the Team

Join the AI Agent Engineering team, where we're pioneering cutting-edge HR & Finance AI Agents that deeply integrate within the Workday suite. Be part of an innovative, agile force architecting intelligent agents that will revolutionize our customers' workday.

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Principal AI Engineer who will serve as a technical architect for a cross-functional team building transformative AI agents for HR & Finance. This role is critical in defining the tooling strategy, staying ahead of industry trends, and ensuring our AI-driven solutions seamlessly integrate deeply within the Workday stack. You will be responsible for evaluating and selecting AI frameworks, orchestrating agent workflows, and leveraging LLMs, automation frameworks and enterprise AI technologies to design and develop scalable, reliable and trusted AI agents for both the HR and Finance. As agents by design will span multiple parts of the business they will excel at building trusted relationships with other leaders and have experience in leading without authority and collaborating across organizational boundaries. 

Key Responsibilities:
  • Architect AI-powered agents that integrate deeply into HR and Financial workflows, accelerating intelligent decision making.

  • Understanding of AI Lifecycle: Comprehensive knowledge of the AI system lifecycle, including problem definition, data acquisition, model training, system integration, and validation

  • Evaluate, select, and integrate AI tools, frameworks, and platforms to ensure scalability, efficiency, and compliance 

  • Stay up to date with advancements in AI, LLMs, RAG, autonomous agents and orchestration frameworks to drive innovation 

  • Define best practices for agent design, security, and governance in AI-driven enterprise applications.

  • Work with product, engineering, and data science teams to design and implement AI-based automation solutions that enhance HR and financial operations.

  • Develop strategies for multi-agent collaboration, ensuring AI agents can work together and interact effectively with users and across the business.

  • Identify new opportunities to embed AI into the Workday platform.

  • Collaborate with external AI vendors, cloud providers, and open-source communities to bring the best-in-class technologies into our AI stack.

  • Establish monitoring, feedback loops, and continuous learning mechanisms to improve agent performance over time.

About You

Basic Qualifications

  • 12+ years of experience with product engineering leading the development and delivery of highly available cloud products

  • 7+ years of experience in AI, machine learning, or intelligent automation, with a focus on enterprise applications.

  • Deep understanding of LLMs, AI agents, and orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangGraph)

  • Experience with enterprise-grade AI architectures, API integration, and large-scale automation.

  • Proficiency in Python, cloud AI services (AWS, Azure, GCP), and AI model deployment.

  • Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to translate business needs into AI-powered solutions.

  • Experience in data privacy, security, and compliance for AI in enterprise environments

Other Qualifications

  • Masters/Doctorate degree in a relevant field, such as Computer Science, Mathematics, or Engineering.

  • Experience developing and deploying machine learning solutions using large-scale datasets, including specification design, data collection and labeling, model development, validation, deployment, and ongoing monitoring.

  • Hands-on experience with vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and fine-tuning LLMs.

  • Experience with fine-tuning models including identifying and curating datasets as well as experimenting with models for iterative improvement 


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.WA.SeattlePrimary Location Base Pay Range: $274,000 USD - $412,000 USD


 

Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $249,000 USD - $443,000 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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