Senior Software Development Engineer (US Federal)

Workday•Reston, VA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

This role will support one or more direct or indirect contracts with the U.S. Federal Government which, due to federal government security requirements, mandates that all Workday personnel working on the contracts be United States citizens (naturalized or native). May be required to be on site at client locations in the DC, MD, and VA (DMV) area. Are you eager to use Workday's vast computing resources and extensive datasets? Do you want to collaborate with extraordinary engineers to build and evolve our Observability data platform? If so, we'd love to hear from you! The work isn’t theoretical. It’s operational. It’s high-impact. And it demands rigor, integrity, and long-term thinking. From day one, you’ll be part of a team that values collaboration, follow-through, and doing the right thing—especially when the stakes are high. Our culture is grounded in integrity, respect, and shared responsibility. We challenge each other to think clearly, act thoughtfully, and build solutions that stand up to real-world demands. Here, curiosity is matched with accountability. Ambition is paired with trust. You’ll have the space to do your best work, the support to keep growing, and the backing of a company committed to long-term investment in both its people and the federal mission. If you’re looking to apply your experience to meaningful, mission-driven work—alongside colleagues who take pride in building things that last—you’ll find that opportunity at Workday.

Requirements

BS/MS in Computer Science or a related technical field.
Strong software engineering background with a consistent track record of delivering high-quality products at scale.
Exceptional coding skills (Java, Python; Go is a plus) and the ability to design systems that meet business needs.
Solid understanding of high-performance data capture and collection systems, API design, and reliable data delivery.
Good understanding of Time-Series Databases and Log collection and management.
Good knowledge and understanding of Kubernetes.
A minimum of 5 years of experience building high-performance data ingestion software, addressing concurrency, latency, and efficiency challenges.
Excellent interpersonal, technical, and communication skills.
Ability to prioritize multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment.
Fluency in Linux.
Experience with Infrastructure Automation (Ansible, Chef, Terraform).
Applicants must have the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government issued security clearance.

Nice To Haves

An active TS/SCI w/CI Poly is preferred
Demonstrable experience with the Prometheus Ecosystem, Elastic Search, Grafana and InfluxData stack.
Experience with PromQL and InfluxQL.
Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and Helm.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and enhance critical Observability services, including Monitoring, Logging, Alerting, and Tracing.
Develop data capture and collection services using pioneering technologies across diverse infrastructure environments (Kubernetes, OpenStack, Bare Metal, etc.).
Design and develop core software modules for real-time and batch data processing.
Construct Metrics ingestion pipelines, Alert definitions, and automation for Dashboard lifecycle management.
Build and deploy infrastructure components in production environments.
Champion all aspects of observability with a focus on data quality, integrity, and availability.
Evaluate and implement new open-source and cloud-native tools and technologies as needed.
Participate in the on-call rotation to support the observability platform.
Manage and optimize Workday within the air-gapped U.S. AWS cloud regions, forming the core of the team responsible for this mission.
Collaborate closely with our commercial software engineering teams responsible for the overall Workday platform.
Partner with the Workday Federal Cyber Defense team to ensure security operations, cybersecurity posture, governance, risk, compliance, and platform security health.