Senior AI Engineer

Workday • Pleasanton, CA

13d • $176,000 - $312,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior AI Engineer in Workday’s Agent Factory drives end-to-end system design, implementation, and product integration for a core domain of next-generation intelligent agents. The role focuses on intelligence orchestration and product delivery, connecting AI capabilities to Workday products. It develops and integrates foundational models safely and reliably into functional, production-grade software, and designs, experiments with, and orchestrates complex agentic workflows to translate AI capabilities into scalable business value. The engineer contributes to Responsible and Governed AI by implementing guardrails for privacy, predictability, and explainability when agents interact with sensitive HR and financial data. The position combines domain-level system architecture with hands-on execution, addressing latency, cost, and reliability constraints.

Agent Factory is a small-team, cross-functional environment bringing together product leaders, AI engineers, and full-stack builders to create production-grade agents embedded in Workday’s platform. Teams own problems end to end and work across AI, platform architecture, and human workflows, with autonomy to shape how agents reason, act, and scale responsibly.

Requirements

• Either 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with strong expertise in backend architecture, distributed systems, and API design, plus 1+ year building production-grade LLM or agentic systems; or 5+ years specifically in Machine Learning Engineering or AI application development, with 2+ years shipping LLM-backed products.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience integrating large models, including LLMs or foundation models, and modern AI APIs into user-facing enterprise products.
• 1+ year of experience designing and scaling AI orchestration architectures, such as multi-agent frameworks, routing layers, or advanced RAG pipelines.
• 4+ years of experience optimizing application performance, including API latency and user interaction design, with 1+ year applying this to modern LLM constraints such as token management, cost optimization, and context-window efficiency.
• 4+ years of experience using cloud computing platforms such as AWS or GCP to deploy highly responsive, scalable systems.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or an equivalent technical field.
• Strong understanding of governance, guardrails, security layers, and evaluation mechanisms for deploying autonomous agents over sensitive enterprise HR and financial data.
• Proven ability to technically lead engineering workstreams, own development lifecycles, and mentor junior-to-mid-level engineers.
• Strong product focus, with an ability to apply deep learning and large models to practical end-user challenges.
• Ability to architect robust application layers around AI models, including reusable patterns for predictability, error handling, and seamless user experience integration.
• Skill in rapid prototyping, benchmarking model outputs against product requirements, and setting up automated evaluation metrics.
• Ability to work autonomously amid ambiguity and turn open-ended product goals into concrete, scalable engineering solutions.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or an equivalent technical field.

Responsibilities

• Drive end-to-end system design, implementation, and product integration for a core domain of intelligent agents.
• Connect AI capabilities to Workday products through intelligence orchestration and product delivery.
• Develop and integrate foundational models safely and reliably into production-grade software.
• Design, experiment with, and orchestrate complex agentic workflows.
• Implement Responsible and Governed AI guardrails for data privacy, predictability, and explainability.
• Address product constraints including latency, cost, and reliability.
• Technically lead engineering workstreams, own the development lifecycle, and mentor junior-to-mid-level engineers.
• Prototype and benchmark model outputs against product requirements and establish automated evaluation metrics.

Benefits

• May be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission or bonus.
• May be eligible for annual refresh stock grants.
• Flexible work schedule, with at least 50% of time each quarter spent in the office or in the field with customers, prospects, and partners, depending on the role.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior