Your work days are brighter here.
At Workday, it all began with a conversation over breakfast. When our founders met at a sunny California diner, they came up with an idea to revolutionize the enterprise software market. And when we began to rise, one thing that really set us apart was our culture. A culture which was driven by our value of putting our people first. And ever since, the happiness, development, and contribution of every Workmate is central to who we are. Our Workmates believe a healthy employee-centric, collaborative culture is the essential mix of ingredients for success in business. That’s why we look after our people, communities and the planet while still being profitable. Feel encouraged to shine, however that manifests: you don’t need to hide who you are. You can feel the energy and the passion, it's what makes us unique. Inspired to make a brighter work day for all and transform with us to the next stage of our growth journey? Bring your brightest version of you and have a brighter work day here.
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About the Team
The Capacity Engineering team within Workday's Performance, Resiliency, and Scalability organization is growing. We're dedicated to driving capacity engineering to meet the continuous scalability requirements of the Workday stack, ensuring our resiliency and reliability are continuously strengthened.Our pivotal role means all Workday's critical services can scale to meet the rapid growth of our customers across both private and public clouds. This team is at the forefront of innovation, constantly evolving to scale the next generation of critical Workday services.
We foster an environment of open communication, mutual support, and continuous learning, where every member's contribution is valued and encouraged. We thrive on tackling challenges together and celebrating shared successes.
About the Role
As a Principal Technical Architect on the Capacity Engineering team, you'll be a pivotal leader, shaping the very foundation of Workday's scalability and reliability. You'll be responsible for designing and architecting cutting-edge frameworks for capacity engineering across Workday's core and shared services, ensuring our systems can seamlessly handle the demands of our rapidly growing customer base.
This role isn't just about design; it's about hands-on technical leadership and innovation. You'll delve deep into our distributed systems, identifying bottlenecks, defining robust capacity models, and pioneering solutions that push the boundaries of performance and resilience.
Key responsibilities will include:
Architecting Scalable Frameworks: Design and implement architectural frameworks and tooling for proactive capacity planning, modeling, and management for critical Workday services.Technical Leadership & Guidance: Provide senior technical leadership, mentoring engineers, and guiding the team on best practices for building scalable, resilient, and performant distributed systems.System Analysis & Optimization: Conduct in-depth analysis of system performance, resource utilization, and growth patterns to identify optimization opportunities and predict future capacity needs.Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with engineering teams, product management, and SREs to integrate capacity insights into the development lifecycle and influence product architecture.Innovation & Research: Stay ahead of industry trends and emerging technologies, evaluating and recommending new approaches to continuously enhance Workday's scalability and operational efficiency.This is a unique opportunity to make a profound impact on Workday's core infrastructure, directly influencing the experience of millions of users and ensuring our platform remains world-class in performance and reliability.
About You
You're an accomplished Principal Engineer or Technical Architect with extensive experience in designing, building, and scaling highly performant and resilient distributed systems. You thrive on tackling complex architectural challenges and possess a deep understanding of system internals, performance tuning, and capacity management in large-scale environments.
Basic Qualifications:
10+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant hands-on experience in system-level architecture, performance, resiliency, and scalability for complex distributed systems.Deep understanding, knowledge, and hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production environments, including advanced concepts like custom resource definitions, operators, and cluster optimization.Expertise in distributed computing principles, microservices architectures, and cloud-native patterns, specifically on leading public cloud platforms (AWS and GCP).Profound understanding of JVM internals (e.g., garbage collection, memory management, threading) and their impact on application performance and scalability.Proven ability to design and implement robust, scalable technical architectures and translate broad business requirements into clear, executable design specifications.Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, with a track record of identifying root causes, proposing innovative solutions, and making data-driven architectural decisions.Demonstrated experience in technical leadership, including mentoring senior engineers, leading critical technical initiatives, and influencing architectural direction within an engineering organization.Other Qualifications:
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with a proven ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.Strong collaborative spirit, enjoying cross-functional teamwork, driving consensus, and fostering a shared understanding of technical goals.A continuous learning mindset, staying current with industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in cloud architecture, performance engineering, and system design.Experience with capacity planning, performance modeling, or cost optimization frameworks in a large-scale cloud environment.You're passionate about building robust, scalable solutions and eager to make a significant impact on a mission-critical platform. If you're looking for an opportunity to lead, innovate, and shape the future of enterprise cloud applications, we encourage you to apply.
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
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.
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