Distinguished Architect, Developer Platform
About The Position
The Distinguished Architect is a core member of Workday’s Developer Platform leadership team and the primary technical authority across the platform. The role will guide the transformation of Workday’s developer platform from a specialized low-code application framework into open, headless infrastructure for building autonomous AI systems. This includes defining the architecture and roadmap for developer APIs, SDKs, developer experiences, enterprise AI primitives, and platform infrastructure that enables developers to use Workday’s business context and data securely. The architect will advise executive leadership and R&D on complex technical challenges and tradeoffs, work closely with product and engineering leaders to turn platform goals into practical plans, and represent the platform to customers, partners, and the developer community. The role also develops senior technical talent and promotes strong architecture and engineering practices across the organization.
Requirements
- 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.
- Proven track record 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 for continuous, real-time agentic workflows at enterprise scale.
- Expertise in headless developer toolchains, SDK generation pipelines, CLI and MCP tools, and federated API architectures designed for developer adoption.
- Proven background steering engineering teams through high-impact technical evolution and associated operational transformations.
- Ability to evaluate technical choices through a business lens, balancing architecture, time-to-market, revenue, operating costs, and measurable customer outcomes.
- Deep expertise in API security, multi-tenant isolation, fine-grained authorization (RBAC/ABAC), policy-as-code frameworks, and runtime guardrails for secure enterprise data and AI primitive exposure.
- Strong history of technical ambassadorship, including engagement with executive customer stakeholders, ecosystem contributions, and speaking at major industry conferences.
Responsibilities
- Lead the architectural evolution of the developer platform into an open, headless AI developer toolchain, including developer services, API primitives, SDKs, and developer experiences.
- Define architecture for securely exposing Workday business context and enterprise data models to third-party developers and autonomous AI agents.
- Establish long-term technical roadmaps, eventing models, and multi-tenant integration patterns to support availability, low latency, and enterprise guardrails.
- Serve as the primary technical authority for Workday’s developer ecosystem and advise executive leadership and R&D on distributed systems, technical tradeoffs, and scalability.
- Represent Workday’s developer platform vision to executive customer stakeholders, strategic partners, and the broader developer community.
- Mentor architects and senior engineering talent; establish architecture design reviews, development standards, and a culture of customer-first innovation.
- Partner with product and engineering leaders to convert platform vision into architectural blueprints, execution plans, and phased roadmaps.
- Lead joint architectural initiatives with strategic ecosystem partners to integrate platform primitives into third-party enterprise stacks.
- Align architecture across adjacent Workday platform teams to ensure interoperability.
- Partner with and advise the Chief Architect on Developer Platform concerns.
Benefits
- May be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission/bonus.
- May be eligible for annual refresh stock grants.
- Workday comprehensive benefits are referenced, but specific benefits are not listed in the posting.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
