Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

Workday • Pleasanton, CA

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) organization works across Product, Engineering, and customer execution for Agent Factory, Sana, Workday products, and the Developer Platform. FDEs support early deployments of new AI agents and products by addressing real-world technical challenges, debugging complex configurations, and building lightweight integrations. They also relay field insights and recurring customer issues to Product and Engineering to help create scalable product capabilities.

In this role, you will combine hands-on software development with customer technical strategy. You will work with enterprise customers to architect, deploy, debug, and optimize Workday AI agents and developer platform solutions in live customer environments. Across the deployment lifecycle, you will collaborate with AI Deployment Architects, Product Managers, Workday Services leads, and Account Teams. The role focuses on both achieving immediate customer success and reducing implementation friction by incorporating field-tested solutions into the core platform. Engagements follow structured milestones from kickoff to graduation, typically within standard six-month deployment cycles.

The position uses Workday Flex Work: employees spend at least half of their time each quarter in the office or in the field with customers, prospects, and partners, with flexibility to organize schedules around business, team, and personal needs. Travel to customer sites may be required up to 20%.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Technical Consulting, or Software Development.
• Hands-on coding and debugging skills in Python, Java, or a similar language.
• Solid understanding of REST APIs, object-oriented design, system architecture, and integration patterns.
• Proven experience working directly with enterprise clients on complex software deployments, live data troubleshooting, and custom workflow integration.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 20% to customer sites as needed.
• Ability to identify generalizable product requirements from bespoke customer issues.
• Exceptional verbal and written technical communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical challenges to non-technical leadership.
• Ability to thrive in fast-paced environments with evolving requirements across Product, Engineering, and Services teams.
• Collaborative, low-ego approach and ability to work in multidisciplinary account and delivery pods.

Nice To Haves

• Applied experience with LLM-powered or agentic AI systems, such as prompt or context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, evaluations, or agent orchestration frameworks.
• Working understanding of how model behavior can appear as product and customer-facing issues in the field.

Responsibilities

• Deploy, configure, and debug AI agents and integrations in live enterprise tenant environments using complex customer workflows and real-world data.
• Lead technical discovery sessions with customer stakeholders and translate business requirements into product configurations, proofs of concept, and integration specifications.
• Capture field telemetry, edge-case failures, and customer friction points to inform the product roadmap and engineering backlog.
• Identify recurring deployment challenges and turn custom fixes into standardized, automated, out-of-the-box product capabilities.
• Partner with Workday Services leads, AI Deployment Architects, and Account Teams to support project delivery while maintaining focus on core product strength.
• Guide customer engagements through structured milestones from kickoff to graduation, enabling customers to take ownership within standard six-month deployment cycles.

Benefits

• May be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission or bonus.
• May be eligible for annual refresh stock grants.
• Workday offers a comprehensive benefits package; details are available through Workday.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed