Principal AI Researcher

Workday•Pleasanton, CA

22h•$190,600 - $342,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Workday AI Research is a newly built, elite organization dedicated to advancing the state-of-the-art in AI to power the Agentic Enterprise. We sit at the heart of Agent Factory, Workday’s innovation hub. While Agent Factory builds the production-grade agents used by 65M+ people, the AI Research team discovers the fundamental breakthroughs that make those agents possible. We are a high-impact, "research-to-reality" team. We don’t just conduct experiments in a vacuum; we solve the hardest enterprise-level problems in reasoning, planning, and multi-modal understanding. As a founding member of this research arm, you will help shape our research culture, publication strategy, and the fundamental intelligence layer of the Workday platform. As a Principal AI Researcher, you will be a technical founder and visionary for the Workday AI Research Team. This is a role for a scientist-leader who thrives on defining the frontier rather than just following a roadmap. You will move the needle on how LLMs and autonomous agents function within the complex, high-trust environment of global enterprise data. You will bridge the gap between groundbreaking theory and massive-scale application. Your work will involve defining research roadmaps for agentic reasoning, long-horizon planning, and model alignment, ensuring that Workday remains the world leader in responsible, intelligent enterprise agents.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in AI/ML research or applied science, with a proven history of taking products from applied research to global-scale production.
Ph.D. or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Math, Physics, or equivalent technical field.
4+ years of professional experience using deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
2+ years of deep expertise in LLMs or VLMs, specifically in training, alignment (RLHF/DPO), or agentic reasoning frameworks.
SOTA Publication Record: A strong history of lead-researcher publications in top AI venues OR a proven track record of shipping industry-defining AI innovations to millions of users.

Nice To Haves

Agentic AI Pioneer: Strong background in reinforcement learning, tool-use, or multi-agent systems.
Systems Thinking: Ability to conduct research under real-world constraints, such as latency, cost-to-serve, and enterprise data privacy.
Leadership in Ambiguity: Proven experience in building a research agenda from the ground up and leading technical strike teams through open-ended problems.
Communication: Exceptional ability to translate complex research breakthroughs into strategic value for product leaders and executive stakeholders.
Ethics & Trust: A deep commitment to developing AI that is explainable, fair, and safe for the world’s largest workforces.

Responsibilities

Define research direction in Agentic AI and LLMs.
Advance the state of the art in agentic systems, including retrieval, grounding, memory, context, personalization, etc.
Foundational Model Research: Advance Workday’s proprietary capabilities in pre-training, post-training (RLHF, DPO), and domain-specific alignment for HR and Finance workflows.
Publish & Open Source: Lead Workday’s contribution to the global AI community through publications at top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, ACL, etc.) and strategic open-source releases.
Research-to-Production Bridge: Partner with Agent Factory engineering pods to integrate SOTA research into production-ready services that scale to the world's largest organizations.
Mentorship & Culture: Act as a force multiplier for the newly formed research team, fostering a culture of scientific rigor, curiosity, and high-velocity experimentation.