Staff Workday Integration Engineer

Airbnb

16h•$180,000 - $225,000•Remote

About The Position

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way. The Talent Systems team within BizTech is the trusted technology partner to Employee Experience, Recruiting, Payroll, Procurement, Legal, and Privacy teams across Airbnb's global operations. Driven by the philosophy of "High Tech, Human Touch," we design and implement technology that meets both business objectives and employee needs, building robust frameworks that support the full employee journey, delivering AI-enabled self-service tools, and playing a key role in payroll management and benefits enrollment. We own and operate a portfolio of 300+ production integrations spanning payroll processors, benefits carriers, identity providers, compliance vendors, and internal platforms, with Workday at the center. You'll partner closely with HR Centers of Excellence, IT Security, Finance, and external vendors to deliver enterprise-grade integration solutions that power Airbnb's global HR technology ecosystem. As a Staff Workday Integration Engineer, you are the technical authority for the integration initiatives that BizTech and Airbnb depend on. You will help define our integration strategy and technical roadmap, setting architectural standards that enable seamless HR data flows across our global employee population. This is a hands-on builder role. You will personally write integration logic, own production reliability, and make the architectural decisions other engineers build against. You will drive touchless automation, reduce manual intervention, and ensure compliance across multiple jurisdictions. Your work directly impacts how thousands of Airbnb employees experience their payroll, benefits, time tracking, and HR processes. As a Staff-level engineer, you will think 12+ months ahead, proactively surface systemic gaps, and establish patterns adopted across the Talent Systems team. The team is also actively investing in agentic systems and AI-enabled internal tooling that reshape how employees interact with HR processes, and you will gain hands-on exposure to that work.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience)
12+ years of industry experience in software development or systems integration
8+ years of hands-on Workday integration development covering the full lifecycle: requirements, design, build, testing, go-live, and post-production support
Workday Studio: complex multi-step integrations, sub-integrations, custom error handling and fault frameworks, XSLT transformations
Core Connectors: worker data, business process events, payroll and benefits outbound connectors
Enterprise Interface Builder (EIBs): deep knowledge of appropriate use cases and limitations versus Studio
Document Transforms: payload mapping and field-level transformation logic
RaaS (Report-as-a-Service): advanced report design, calculated fields, and API endpoint exposure
Workday Web Services (WWS): WSDL reading, SOAP/REST calls, versioning, and error response handling
Expert proficiency in XSLT, XML, and JSON; comfortable with Java sufficient for Workday Studio custom steps
Deep working knowledge of the Business Process Framework and how events trigger integration flows
Familiarity with Workday functional configuration across HCM, Benefits, Payroll, Security, and Time & Absence, sufficient to independently diagnose upstream data and process issues
Strong foundational understanding of HR and payroll processes: hire-to-retire lifecycle, compensation and benefits administration, global compliance reporting, and how these processes generate the data that integrations carry
Strong knowledge of data security and compliance: PGP, SFTP, OAuth 2.0, SAML, WS-Security, PII handling
Proven experience managing integrations across Workday's semi-annual release cycle, including impact assessment and sandbox testing
Git-based version control and structured deployment and change management practices
Demonstrated record as a technical leader who has shaped architecture decisions and raised engineering quality across a team
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; able to write clear IDDs and runbooks, and present technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders
Experience working in an Agile/Scrum environment

Nice To Haves

Workday Pro Certification in Integrations (highly valued)
Hands-on experience with Workday Extend (data models, UI pages, Extend APIs); accelerates ramp into the owned Extend scope
Workday Pro Certification in Extend
Hands-on experience with Workday Orchestrate; accelerates ramp into the owned Orchestrate scope
Experience with Workday payroll interfaces (PECI, PICOF) and third-party payroll providers
Experience with middleware or iPaaS platforms and the architectural judgment to know when middleware fits versus native Workday integration or Extend
Experience supporting global, multi-country production environments
Knowledge of GDPR, India PDPB, or SOC 2 compliance requirements in the context of HR data flows
Experience integrating LLM-based tools, AI agents, or automation platforms with enterprise HR or business systems

Responsibilities

Define and own Airbnb's Workday integration architecture standards, patterns, and governance frameworks
Lead architectural decisions for complex, high-risk integration initiatives, including global rollouts, payroll runs, benefits open enrollment, and system migrations
Evaluate and advise on build-vs-buy decisions, Workday-native-vs-middleware trade-offs, and long-term integration platform strategy
Establish reusable integration design patterns, error handling frameworks, and observability standards adopted team-wide
Anticipate platform evolution and architect integrations that accommodate Workday's semi-annual releases with minimal rework
Architect, design, build, and maintain complex inbound and outbound integrations using Workday Studio, Core Connectors, EIBs, Document Transforms, and RaaS API endpoints
Develop integrations against Workday Web Services (WWS): WSDL interpretation, web service versioning, request/response handling for SOAP and REST
Own design and delivery of high-volume integration scenarios: payroll runs, benefits open enrollment, global workforce changes, and multi-country rollouts
Build and maintain advanced Custom Reports and Calculated Fields for integration consumption
Work deeply within the Business Process Framework, understanding how process events trigger integration flows
Maintain expert knowledge of Workday payroll interfaces (PECI, PICOF) and their interaction with third-party payroll providers
Manage integration portfolio across Workday's semi-annual release cycle: assess release notes, lead sandbox testing, deploy to production with rigorous change controls
Define and own Airbnb's adoption strategy for Workday Extend, including when Extend is the right tool versus Studio, EIB, or middleware
Architect and build custom Workday Extend applications (data models, business logic, UI pages, orchestration flows) for HR processes not supported natively
Design and expose Extend REST APIs for internal consumers and external vendor integrations; govern API versioning, OAuth 2.0 authentication, and rate limit strategies
Lead adoption of Workday Orchestrate for multi-system workflow coordination across Workday and external systems
Own the Extend and Orchestrate application lifecycle: requirements, design, development, sandbox testing, production deployment, and ongoing maintenance
Drive operational excellence across the integration portfolio: SLAs, prioritization, and escalation handling
Own SLAs for the most critical integrations; establish monitoring, alerting, retry logic, idempotency, and runbook standards that raise the bar across the team
Drive root cause analysis on integration failures and implement preventative controls
Implement PII handling, audit controls, and data reconciliation strategies meeting GDPR, India PDPB, and SOC 2 requirements
Enforce data security protocols: PGP, SSH, SFTP, HTTPS, OAuth 2.0, SAML, and WS-Security across all integration surfaces
Own tenant deployment strategy: sandbox to production promotion, Git-based version control of integration artifacts, and rollback planning
Maintain a strong working understanding of core HR and payroll processes (hire-to-retire, compensation cycles, benefits enrollment, compliance reporting) sufficient to design integrations that reflect real business requirements
Partner with Employee Experience, Recruiting, Payroll, Total Rewards, and Legal/Privacy to translate HR process requirements into sound technical architectures
Understand how HR data flows across the enterprise: from Workday as the system of record through downstream payroll processors, benefits carriers, identity providers, and compliance platforms
Proactively surface configuration and upstream data issues that affect integration reliability, and partner with functional owners to resolve them
Bring an employee-centric lens to integration design so the technology we build translates to seamless experiences for the people it serves
Act as a technical authority for Workday integrations across BizTech; influence architectural decisions in adjacent teams including middleware, Identity, and Data Platform
Mentor and upskill senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, code reviews, pair development, and documented standards
Translate ambiguous, high-level business requirements into sound technical architectures; clearly communicate constraints, trade-offs, and risks to stakeholders at all levels
Write authoritative Integration Design Documents and operational runbooks maintainable by the broader team
Proactively identify systemic risks and integration portfolio health issues; drive resolution and communicate transparently with leadership
Represent Talent Systems in enterprise architecture forums and vendor technical discussions on integration topics