Sr Director, Software Development Engineering

Workday•Pleasanton, CA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

Workday is seeking a Sr Director, Software Development Engineering to lead two closely aligned engineering organizations: Database Engineering and Public Cloud Migration Engineering. This executive leadership role is responsible for establishing a cohesive strategy across both portfolios while maintaining clear accountability, priorities, roadmaps, and operating models for each. The role involves organizational strategy, talent development, investment prioritization, cross-functional alignment, and delivery management. The Database Engineering team manages and scales the core MySQL and PostgreSQL infrastructure supporting the Workday platform, focusing on reliability, availability, security, scalability, and performance, and leading the evolution to automated, observable, and resilient cloud-native platforms. The Public Cloud Migration Engineering team defines the strategy, operating model, and roadmap for public-cloud customer migrations, developing and scaling migration platforms, automation, tooling, and processes. This role requires fostering a culture of accountability, inclusion, technical excellence, continuous improvement, and customer focus.

Requirements

15+ years of experience in database engineering, cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, software engineering, or a related technical discipline.
8+ years of experience leading and developing management leaders, including Directors and Senior Managers.
10+ years of experience building high-performing technical teams and delivering complex projects or programs.
Experience leading large-scale database engineering, cloud platform, infrastructure reliability, or public-cloud migration organizations.
Experience setting and delivering multi-year organizational and technology strategies in complex enterprise environments.
Experience with multi-cloud architectures, including AWS and GCP, and migration of global enterprise workloads.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
Deep understanding of database reliability, disaster recovery, observability, incident management, performance engineering, and capacity planning.
Architectural knowledge of database internals, including replication topologies, engine tuning, and distributed-systems latency.
Experience with Kubernetes, container platforms, infrastructure as code, CI/CD principles, and automated operations.
Familiarity with AWS and GCP cloud environments and associated database services.
Demonstrated success improving platform reliability, migration throughput, operational efficiency, and customer experience.
Ability to influence and align executive partners across Engineering, Product, Customer Support, Cloud Operations, Security, and other functions.
Excellent executive communication, organizational leadership, relationship-building, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

Establish a cohesive strategy across Database Engineering and Public Cloud Migration Engineering portfolios.
Set the strategy and organizational direction for database platform reliability, availability, security, scalability, and performance.
Lead the evolution from manual database operations to highly automated, observable, and resilient cloud-native platforms.
Establish standards for reliability engineering, incident management, disaster recovery, capacity planning, service-level objectives, and operational excellence.
Ensure the database platform meets current and future business needs in partnership with Infrastructure, Cloud Operations, Security, and Product Engineering leaders.
Define the strategy, operating model, and multi-year roadmap for public-cloud customer migrations.
Lead the development and scaling of migration platforms, automation, tooling, and processes that enable secure, dependable, and efficient migrations.
Partner with Product, Customer Support, Cloud Operations, and customer-facing teams to align migration capacity, eligibility, priorities, customer commitments, and risk management.
Improve migration predictability, throughput, and customer experience, while advancing multi-cloud capabilities and platform standardization.
Lead and develop senior engineering leaders, managers, and high-performing technical teams across both portfolios.
Set clear organizational goals, success measures, investment priorities, and delivery commitments.
Balance the distinct needs of database reliability and migration delivery while identifying opportunities for shared platforms, automation, and operating practices.
Represent both organizations in executive planning, cross-functional reviews, and strategic decision-making.
Foster a culture of accountability, inclusion, technical excellence, continuous improvement, and customer focus.