Workday System Administrator

Fairfield University•Fairfield, CT

13h

About The Position

The Workday System Administrator is part of the Enterprise Systems team and serves as the primary administrator for Workday Student, working alongside an administrator who leads HCM, Finance, and Payroll. The role owns Student security, business process, and tenant administration; leads duplicate record management; and provides secondary coverage across other Workday modules. The administrator also evaluates new Workday capabilities, including AI agents and platform extensions, and supports their secure adoption in compliance with FERPA, GLBA, and other applicable regulations. The position administers Workday Student business processes, tenants, environments, data refreshes, configuration changes, and production migrations. Responsibilities also include configuration and maintenance, data loads, ticket resolution, system and integration monitoring, change control, cross-functional escalation support, security administration, access reviews, release assessment and testing, reporting, process improvement, documentation, and training. The administrator partners with functional leads and provides technical guidance and secondary-support training to ITS staff and functional leads. On-campus work is preferred; remote and hybrid arrangements may be considered upon request. Occasional travel to campus for remote employees, Workday training, and the annual Workday Rising conference may be required. Occasional evening and weekend work may also be required. The expected wage range is $100,000–$120,000. Eligible employees may receive health, dental, retirement, paid time off, tuition benefits, and other benefits according to institutional policy.

Requirements

3 to 5 years of Workday administration experience, including at least 3 years of security administration.
Experience with Workday reporting, calculated fields, EIB, RaaS, and web services, including SOAP, REST, XML, XSLT, and JSON.
Functional knowledge of Workday Student, HCM, Finance, or Payroll and the Workday business process framework.
Working knowledge of segregation of duties, least-privilege access, FERPA, and GLBA.
Familiarity with ITIL change control, SDLC, and Agile practices.
Bachelor’s degree in a technology field or equivalent professional experience.
Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and root-cause analysis skills.
Ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical business owners.
Strong organizational and time-management skills, including the ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines.
Collaborative, service-oriented approach to working with colleagues and University partners.
Self-directed approach, intellectual curiosity, and commitment to continuous learning as the Workday platform evolves.

Nice To Haves

Workday Student experience and a higher education background.
Workday Pro or partner certification in Student, Security, Integrations, Reporting, or Extend.
Experience with Workday platform and developer tools such as Studio, Extend, Prism Analytics, Journeys, or their successors.
Experience configuring or governing enterprise-system AI capabilities, such as Workday Illuminate (Sana) agents.
Experience with SQL or WQL and data and analytics platforms such as Snowflake and Tableau.

Responsibilities

Administer Workday Student business processes, tenants and environments, data refreshes, and migrations of changes to production, sharing duties with the counterpart administrator where configuration is common across modules.
Perform configuration and maintenance, data loads, and support ticket resolution; monitor system health, integrations, scheduled jobs, and alerts.
Participate in Change Control by reviewing, approving, and executing changes to Workday configuration, security, and IT-developed solutions.
Provide hands-on escalation support for cross-functional issues involving Workday, integrations, and connected enterprise platforms.
Serve as primary security administrator for Workday Student and secondary administrator for HCM, Finance, and Payroll, including security groups, domain and business process policies, user provisioning, authentication, and proxy access.
Partner with functional leads to design role-based access using segregation-of-duties and least-privilege principles.
Own duplicate management by resolving duplicate person records and account provisioning conflicts in coordination with Admissions, the Registrar, and Human Resources.
Conduct regular access reviews and audits, support FERPA and GLBA compliance, and document security configurations and controls.
Assess Workday releases for effects on configuration, security, and business processes; coordinate unit, integration, and user acceptance testing and adoption.
Maintain knowledge of the Workday product roadmap and capabilities through Workday Community, release notes, training, and the Workday Rising conference.
Evaluate new Workday capabilities for institutional fit and define required security, data access, and governance controls before enablement, including permissions and oversight for AI agents in the tenant.
Partner with functional leads to translate business needs into scalable configuration, including business processes, calculated fields, and routing rules.
Identify process improvement and automation opportunities, including opportunities involving third-party applications integrated with Workday.
Build and maintain reports and dashboards using Workday reporting tools.
Document business processes and provide end-user training.
Provide peer review and technical guidance, and contribute hands-on configuration, integration, and reporting work during peak periods and high-priority initiatives.
Train ITS staff and functional leads to provide secondary support, and contribute to collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Perform other duties, responsibilities, and activities as required by the supervisor and departmental or University needs.