Senior Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

Workday • Pleasanton, CA

1d • $174,800 - $314,400 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organization works across Product, Engineering, and customer execution for Agent Factory, Sana, Products, and the Developer Platform. FDE teams deploy into active customer engagements to resolve technical friction, debug complex configurations, and build lightweight integrations. They also channel field insights, recurring customer issues, and configuration patterns into scalable product capabilities.

The Forward Deployed Engineering Manager leads one or more FDE pods and reports to the SVP who owns Workday’s Data Cloud platform portfolio. The role is accountable for pod operating health, staffing engineers on the right customer engagements, ensuring work leads to lasting product improvements, and managing engagements through selection, kickoff, and exit. The manager leads and develops software engineers, supports them through ambiguous customer engagements, and partners with Product Management, Engineering leadership, Workday Services, AI Deployment Architects, and Account Teams. The role is an escalation point for keeping FDE work focused on product hardening and turning field evidence into roadmap decisions.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Technical Consulting, Software Development, or Product/Program Management in complex enterprise environments, including direct hands-on work with enterprise customers.
• At least 5 years of experience managing, leading, or coaching technical teams, through direct people management or demonstrated technical/team leadership of engineers in customer-facing or field-deployment settings.
• Technical depth to review and guide hands-on engineering work, including understanding of coding and debugging (such as Python or Java), REST APIs, system architecture, and integration patterns.
• Experience managing multiple concurrent, complex software deployments or customer engagements, including live data troubleshooting and custom workflow integration.
• Ability to abstract generalizable product requirements from bespoke customer issues and turn pod-level patterns into roadmap input.
• Experience managing strategic relationships with senior leaders at key accounts and internally across Product, Engineering, and Services; setting expectations, navigating organizational change, and rebuilding trust when engagements encounter difficulties.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to translate complex technical and customer context for senior internal and customer leadership.
• Comfort working with ambiguity and changing requirements across Product, Engineering, and Services teams, with a collaborative, low-ego approach.

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, and understanding of how model behavior presents as product and customer-facing issues.
• Working knowledge of Workday, including business processes, security and permissions, tenant configuration, integrations, and how customers implement and govern Workday.

Responsibilities

• Hire, coach, and develop a high-performing group of FDEs.
• Own staffing and allocation across 2–4 pods, with approximately 10 customer projects per pod, matching FDE skills to engagements.
• Manage the engagement lifecycle, ensure FDEs work on high-value projects, and track and report product progress against a graduation scorecard in partnership with the PAO team.
• Partner with Workday Services leads, AI Deployment Architects, Account Teams, and Product Managers to ensure engagements are properly resourced and FDE effort remains focused on product hardening rather than broader account management.
• Ensure field telemetry, recurring customer friction, and configuration patterns are captured, triaged, and routed into product and engineering backlogs as standard, automated capabilities.
• Create and share playbooks, configuration patterns, and known-issue guides across pods, and hand them off to teams responsible for scaling deployments after product graduation.

Benefits

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

What This Job Offers

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