Distinguished Architect - Developer Platform

Your work days are brighter here.

We’re obsessed with making hard work pay off, for our people, our customers, and the world around us. As a Fortune 500 company and a leading AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, we’re shaping the future of work so teams can reach their potential and focus on what matters most. The minute you join, you’ll feel it. Not just in the products we build, but in how we show up for each other. Our culture is rooted in integrity, empathy, and shared enthusiasm. We’re in this together, tackling big challenges with bold ideas and genuine care. We look for curious minds and courageous collaborators who bring sun-drenched optimism and drive. Whether you're building smarter solutions, supporting customers, or creating a space where everyone belongs, you’ll do meaningful work with Workmates who’ve got your back. In return, we’ll give you the trust to take risks, the tools to grow, the skills to develop and the support of a company invested in you for the long haul. So, if you want to inspire a brighter work day for everyone, including yourself, you’ve found a match in Workday, and we hope to be a match for you too.

About the Team

The Developer Platform team sits at the forefront of one of the most significant shifts in Workday's history, from a people & money application suite to a trusted agentic platform for the enterprise. Our mandate is to build an open platform that empowers all developers with the tools to leverage Workday’s unique business context, data, and guardrails to build new agentic AI solutions on Workday.
We are seeking a visionary architect to join the Developer Platform team and spearhead our transition from a specialized low-code app building platform to an open, headless AI developer toolchain to build autonomous AI systems. Positioned at the intersection of developer APIs, generative AI, and open platform infrastructure, this role will drive our mission to empower anyone to build the future of work with Workday.

About the Role

As a core member of the Developer Platform leadership team, the Distinguished Architect serves as the primary technical authority across the platform. Operating at the highest strategic level, you will guide the transition of Workday’s developer platform into open infrastructure purpose-built for high-throughput autonomous AI system creation. 

Beyond driving the core technical roadmap, you will elevate internal software practices, nurture senior technical talent, and serve as an advisor to the Chief Architect, strategic clients, and industry partners. Collaborating directly across product and R&D organizations, you will translate broad platform goals into practical engineering plans and advise leadership on complex tradeoffs, while guaranteeing a frictionless experience for anyone who wants to build the future of work on Workday.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Strategy & Vision

• Drive Platform Evolution: Spearhead the architectural transformation from a specialized low-code application framework into an open, headless AI developer toolchain, evolving our developer services to generate the API primitives, SDKs, and developer experiences required to build enterprise agentic applications.

• Architect Enterprise AI Primitives: Define the target-state architecture for exposing Workday’s unique business context, enterprise data models, securely to third-party developers and autonomous AI agents.

• Define Open Platform Infrastructure Standards: Establish long-term technical roadmaps, eventing models, and multi-tenant integration patterns that ensure high availability, ultra-low latency, and robust enterprise guardrails for an open ecosystem.

Technical Authority & Strategic Influence

• Serve as Apex Technical Authority: Act as the primary technical expert for Workday's developer ecosystem, advising executive leadership and R&D on complex distributed systems challenges, high-impact technical tradeoffs, and platform scalability.

• Champion Developer Community & Customers: Represent Workday’s developer platform vision as a technical ambassador to executive customer leadership, strategic platform partners, and the broader developer community.

• Cultivate Engineering Excellence: Mentor and grow architects and senior engineering talent across the organization, establishing rigorous architecture design reviews, development standards, and a culture of continuous, customer-first innovation.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Unify Product & R&D Alignment: Partner closely with GM, Product, and Engineering to convert high-level platform vision into clear architectural blueprints, execution plans, and phased engineering roadmaps.

• Drive Technical Partnerships: Spearhead joint architectural initiatives with strategic ecosystem partners, ensuring platform primitives integrate seamlessly into third-party enterprise stacks.

• Steer Cross-Platform Integration: Lead architecture alignment across adjacent Workday platform teams to ensure seamless interoperability across the stack. Partner with and advise Chief Architect on concerns related to Developer Platform.

About You

Basic Qualifications

• 15+ years of distributed systems architecture experience in multi-tenant developer APIs, SaaS/PaaS platforms, or equivalent.

• BA, BS, or equivalent degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field.

Additional Qualifications

• Agentic Systems Architecture: Proven track record of architecting AI/LLM-native developer frameworks, primitives, or tool-calling interfaces for platform ecosystems. Deep background in event-driven architectures, asynchronous data streaming, and low-latency messaging patterns required to support continuous, real-time agentic workflows at enterprise scale.

• Headless & API-First Platform Design: Demonstrated expertise in building headless developer toolchains, SDK generation pipelines, CLI and MCP tools, and federated API architectures designed for developer adoption.

• Large-Scale Architectural Evolution: Proven background in steering engineering teams through high-impact technical evolution and associated operational transformations.

• Strategic Business Acumen & Decision-Making: Demonstrated ability to evaluate complex technical choices through a business lens, balancing long-term architectural purity with time-to-market, revenue generation, operational costs, and measurable customer business outcomes.

• Platform Security & Protection Guardrails: Deep expertise in API security, multi-tenant isolation, fine-grained authorization (RBAC/ABAC), policy-as-code frameworks, and runtime guardrail designs required to safely expose enterprise data, business context, and AI primitives through open developer toolchains and third-party integrations while maintaining high system availability.

• Advocacy & Industry Influence: Strong history of technical ambassadorship, including engaging with executive customer stakeholders, contributing to ecosystems, and speaking at major industry conferences.

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.PleasantonPrimary Location Base Pay Range: $288,000 USD - $432,000 USDAdditional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $247,000 USD - $432,000 USD

Additional Considerations:

If performed in Colorado, the pay range for this job is $260,000 - $390,000 USD based on min and max pay range for that role if performed in CO.11/16/2026

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.

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.

Workday is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals during our application process, in order to perform one or more essential functions of their job, as well as regarding the use of AI tools for employment decision-making to any degree. Please see below for more details including how to request an accommodation as a qualified veteran, due to a disability or for religious reasons, or as otherwise provided under applicable law.

Workday prohibits taking adverse action against any candidate or employee for reporting a possible violation of this policy, requesting one or more work accommodations, exercising a privacy right, or cooperating in an investigation in accordance with applicable law. Any employee who retaliates against a candidate or employee for doing so may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment, to the fullest extent allowable under applicable law.

If you require a reasonable accommodation, you may email [email protected], as far in advance as possible.

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