Senior Software Development Engineer (US Federal)

Workday•Reston, VA

16d•Hybrid

About The Position

Workday Government focuses on outcomes that serve a larger mission, supporting U.S. federal agencies in modernizing their employee lifecycle experience and finance operations. You will join a highly motivated, collaborative engineering team that thrives on teamwork, open communication, and shared problem-solving. Working with modern technologies like Kubernetes, Terraform, and Docker, the team's goal is to build resilient, ultra-performant systems. In this role, you will lead efforts in troubleshooting complex performance issues, analyzing capacity forecasting needs, and driving cloud cost management and optimization. The ideal candidate is a driven engineer who takes pride in their craft, values cross-team collaboration, takes ownership of initiatives, and consistently delivers impactful outcomes. The work is operational, high-impact, and demands technical rigor, strong teamwork, and long-term thinking. This role supports U.S. Federal Government contracts, requiring U.S. Citizenship. It may require on-site presence at client locations in the DC, MD, and VA (DMV) area. As a Sr. Performance Engineer, you will optimize Workday’s Kubernetes platform and cloud infrastructure in AWS GovCloud, leading deep-dive performance troubleshooting, driving capacity forecasting models, and managing cloud infrastructure cost optimization. You will establish robust performance telemetry and load testing strategies to ensure systems remain fast, scalable, cost-efficient, and resilient in air-gapped environments. A growth mindset and collaborative, outcome-driven approach are essential.

Requirements

U.S. Citizenship required due to federal government contract requirements.
Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government TS/SCI security clearance with CI Polygraph. An active TS/SCI w/ CI Poly is strongly preferred.
5+ years of hands-on experience building, scaling, and maintaining production cloud infrastructure, DevOps pipelines, or platform engineering systems (for Senior/P4 level).
Proven proficiency (3+ years) with infrastructure automation tools such as Terraform or Terragrunt (for Senior/P4 level).
Hands-on experience (3+ years) managing continuous delivery pipelines using tools like Argo CD, Jenkins, or GitLab CI (for Senior/P4 level).
Proficiency in (3+ years) modern scripting or programming languages, with a preference for Go or Python (for Senior/P4 level).
Demonstrated ability (3+ years) to independently lead technical initiatives, troubleshoot distributed systems, and mentor junior engineers (for Senior/P4 level).
3+ years of hands-on experience building, scaling, and maintaining production cloud infrastructure, DevOps pipelines, or platform engineering systems (for Mid-Level/P3 level).
Proven proficiency (2+ years) with infrastructure automation tools such as Terraform or Terragrunt (for Mid-Level/P3 level).
Hands-on experience (2+ years) managing continuous delivery pipelines using tools like Argo CD, Jenkins, or GitLab CI (for Mid-Level/P3 level).
Proficiency in (2+ years) modern scripting or programming languages, with a preference for Go or Python (for Mid-Level/P3 level).
Demonstrated ability (1+ years) to independently lead technical initiatives, troubleshoot distributed systems, and mentor junior engineers (for Mid-Level/P3 level).

Nice To Haves

Deep production experience managing containerized workloads in AWS (ideally AWS GovCloud) using Kubernetes and Docker.
Practical experience implementing or managing air-gapped deployment methodologies and isolated cloud architectures.
Background in building robust monitoring, logging, and alerting systems for distributed platforms (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, etc).
Familiarity with federal security frameworks (e.g., FedRAMP, NIST 800-53, Zero Trust architecture).
DoD 8570/8140 compliance at IAT Level II or higher (e.g., CompTIA Security+, CySA+, CASP+) along with a current Computing Environment credential.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent military / practical engineering experience in lieu of a degree).

Responsibilities

Apply deep expertise in distributed systems to diagnose, profile, and resolve complex performance bottlenecks, latency spikes, and resource constraints across Kubernetes workloads in AWS GovCloud.
Build predictive capacity models, analyze system usage trends, and execute stress and load testing to ensure platforms scale seamlessly under peak federal workloads.
Track cloud resource utilization, right-size infrastructure, and implement FinOps strategies using AWS and Kubernetes tools to optimize infrastructure spend without compromising performance or security.
Build, maintain, and optimize APM tools, distributed tracing, and capacity alerting frameworks to detect performance degradations before they impact end users.
Utilize Terraform, Terragrunt, Docker, AWS, and Argo CD to automate infrastructure provisioning, auto-scaling policies, and continuous delivery pipelines.
Conduct performance testing, tuning, and capacity planning tailored specifically to air-gapped deployment methodologies and isolated cloud environments.
Work closely with software developers, security leaders, and platform engineers to establish performance benchmarks, conduct design reviews, and foster performance-aware architecture across teams.
Author technical performance reports, share capacity forecasting insights, and mentor team members on performance profiling and troubleshooting techniques.