Vice President of Engineering, Data Cloud

Workday • Pleasanton, CA

6d • Hybrid

About The Position

Workday is seeking a visionary, transformative, and execution-focused Vice President of Engineering to lead a distributed organization of 230–250+ systems and software engineers in the Data Cloud business unit. The role leads the design, development, and execution of core platforms supporting Workday Data Cloud and partners strategically with the Senior Vice President & General Manager. The executive will drive a major engineering transformation, modernizing the technology stack from legacy platforms such as Prism toward an open, high-performance data ecosystem that supports Workday’s AI-driven growth.

The Data Cloud engineering team builds and maintains Workday’s foundational data layer and works across systems engineering, database design, and strategic cloud partnerships. Its work includes evolving architecture toward modern lakehouses, unified catalogs, and semantic layers, and building an open, zero-copy data ecosystem for predictive modeling, real-time forecasting, and automated insights.

The position provides executive leadership over engineering strategy, organizational scale, systems architecture, platform innovation, product development, and external ecosystem integrations. It calls for an outside-in industry perspective and a culture of urgency, operational discipline, constructive debate, empathy, respect, and inclusion. Workday uses a flexible work approach combining in-person work with remote work; employees spend at least half of each quarter in the office or in the field with customers, prospects, and partners, depending on the role.

The annualized base salary range is $308,000–$462,000 USD for the primary location, Pleasanton, California, and the listed additional U.S. locations. The role may also be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission/bonus, as well as annual refresh stock grants.

Requirements

• 12+ years of progressive software engineering experience.
• 5+ years of dedicated executive leadership experience managing large, multi-tiered engineering organizations in fast-paced environments.
• Proven record of leading successful organizational transformations and improving execution speed while maintaining cultural health.
• Deep technical understanding of data technology evolution, including data warehouses, lakehouses, unified catalogs, and semantic/context layers.
• Strong familiarity with cloud-native architectures, distributed infrastructure, and query optimization.
• Strong awareness of external industry trends and willingness to challenge legacy practices by adopting modern external solutions, open-source frameworks, or strategic integrations.
• Exceptional ability to navigate complex, matrixed environments and align engineering roadmaps with product management, corporate objectives, and executive leadership.
• Strong analytical rigor and ability to adjust strategies while balancing architectural goals, business realities, and execution speed.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.

Nice To Haves

• Experience managing engineering organizations of ideally 150+ people.
• Master’s degree or Ph.D. in a technical field.
• Experience with modern data cloud practices, open-source solutions, zero-copy technology such as Apache Iceberg, or strategic cloud integrations.

Responsibilities

• Lead, scale, and inspire a distributed organization of 230–250+ systems and software engineers.
• Identify, attract, and recruit top-tier industry talent to expand the team’s capabilities.
• Oversee strategic migration and modernization of data infrastructure away from legacy platforms, including Prism, and accelerate adoption of data cloud practices.
• Foster a high-velocity engineering culture with operational discipline, accelerated execution, constructive debate, and intellectual challenge while maintaining an empathetic, respectful, and inclusive environment.
• Drive end-to-end design, development, and debugging of software programs for core ecosystem enhancements and next-generation data products.
• Influence systems architecture, distributed databases, low-latency query engines, and hardware compatibility requirements for high-performance cloud infrastructure.
• Partner with the Senior Vice President & General Manager and product leadership to translate strategic vision into engineering plans and priorities.
• Prioritize open-source solutions, zero-copy technology such as Apache Iceberg, and AI-powered innovations.
• Collaborate with strategic external partners to design and implement deeply integrated, high-performance, open data-sharing interfaces.
• Lead organizational transformation, drive execution speed, and bring an outside-in industry perspective to engineering decisions.

Benefits

• May be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission/bonus.
• May be eligible for annual refresh stock grants.
• Comprehensive benefits are referenced, but specific benefits are not listed in the posting.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive