Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

Workday•Pleasanton, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Forward Deployed Engineering organization works across Product, Engineering, and customer execution for Agent Factory, Sana, Products, and the Developer Platform. It deploys into active customer engagements to address real-world technical challenges, debug complex configurations, build lightweight integrations, and turn field insights into scalable product capabilities. The Senior Forward Deployed Engineer bridges hands-on software development with customer technical strategy. The role partners with enterprise customers to architect, deploy, debug, and optimize Workday AI agents and developer platform solutions in live customer environments. Across the deployment lifecycle, the engineer collaborates with AI Deployment Architects, Product Managers, Workday Services leads, and Account Teams to achieve immediate customer success and feed tested solutions back into the core platform. The position guides customer engagements through structured milestones from kickoff to graduation, with the goal of enabling self-sustaining customer ownership within standard six-month deployment cycles. The role may involve travel to customer sites up to 20% of the time. Workday uses a flexible work approach in which employees spend at least half of their time each quarter in an office or in the field with customers, prospects, and partners, depending on the role.

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.

Responsibilities

Deploy, configure, and debug AI agents and integrations in live enterprise tenant environments, working with 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 engagements through milestones from kickoff to graduation, enabling customer ownership within standard six-month deployment cycles.