Principal DataOps Engineer (DevOps for Data)

Your work days are brighter here.

We’re obsessed with making hard work pay off, for our people, our customers, and the world around us. As a Fortune 500 company and a leading AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, we’re shaping the future of work so teams can reach their potential and focus on what matters most. The minute you join, you’ll feel it. Not just in the products we build, but in how we show up for each other. Our culture is rooted in integrity, empathy, and shared enthusiasm. We’re in this together, tackling big challenges with bold ideas and genuine care. We look for curious minds and courageous collaborators who bring sun-drenched optimism and drive. Whether you're building smarter solutions, supporting customers, or creating a space where everyone belongs, you’ll do meaningful work with Workmates who’ve got your back. In return, we’ll give you the trust to take risks, the tools to grow, the skills to develop and the support of a company invested in you for the long haul. So, if you want to inspire a brighter work day for everyone, including yourself, you’ve found a match in Workday, and we hope to be a match for you too.

About the Team

About the Role

As a Principal DataOps Engineer (P5), you serve as a preeminent technical authority, strategic leader, and primary architect of Workday’s data platform program execution and methodology deployment. Operating at the highest tier of individual contribution, you define the long-term vision, core execution standards, and multi-quarter roadmaps for a mission-critical infrastructure portfolio, ensuring our platforms are structurally positioned to support Workday's hyper-growth trajectory. You resolve high-level technical ambiguity, mitigate existential architecture risks, and lead complex multi-team transformations to deliver data-as-a-product assets at scale.

We are at the center of Workday's AI-forward operating model, defining and governing the structural use of DataOps, Data Product, and Active Data Governance frameworks across the enterprise ecosystem. We provide the overarching operational blueprints for embedding advanced AI capabilities into our continuous delivery lines, building language model solutions and automated workflows that safely power autonomous workloads. Concurrently, we lead the transition to an AI-first workforce, designing division-level agent networks inside Sana and Gemini environments to automate routine tasks, manage technical debt, and multiply organization-wide delivery velocity.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Delivery: Serve as the preeminent technical authority defining the long-term vision, core execution standards, and multi-quarter architecture blueprints for a mission-critical enterprise cloud infrastructure portfolio. Govern global platform administration paradigms and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) architecture standards and, CICD pipelines, mentoring senior engineers and establishing foundational infrastructure modules across the organization
• Knowledge Management: Establish and govern function-wide knowledge synchronization standards and "Documentation as Code" paradigms across the global DevOps and Analytics Engineering job families to ensure enterprise architectural clarity
• Incident Response & Operational Resilience: Mitigate existential infrastructure and architecture risks across the global enterprise. Design high-scale zero-trust data reliability parameters and predictive platform telemetry layers to guarantee unbroken data platform uptime during hyper-growth cycles
• Agile Operational Facilitation: Sponsor and chair cross-functional technical review boards to align technical direction across competing business segments. Drive complex multi-team infrastructure transformations, navigate platform migration blocks, and manage capital resource planning
• ED&A Methodologies: Establish and govern the core operational blueprints for embedding DataOps and Active Data Governance principles directly into our master software continuous delivery pipelines
• AI Productivity: Pioneer the implementation of an AI-first workforce strategy by building division-level agent networks and automated scripts natively inside Cursor IDE, Sana, and Gemini tracks to automate code refactoring, system validation, and portfolio tracking at an enterprise scale

About You

Basic Qualifications:

• 12+ years of professional technical leadership experience in DataevOps, DevOps, cloud automation, program management, or platform engineering tracks within enterprise data and analytics.
• 12+ years of experience in managing and scaling a suite of interrelated data platform products, cluster configurations, and CI/CD networks at an enterprise level.
• 12+ years of experience performing within leadership presence with a history of influencing VP and SVP-level stakeholders to drive technical consensus and cross-functional organizational pivots.

Other Qualifications:

• Modern Data Stack & Cloud Foundations: Expert-level technical command over high-scale distributed data platforms, capital asset cluster budgeting, modern warehouse layouts, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), and hyperscale pipeline orchestration boundaries.
• Hands-on experience or familiarity with GitHub Actions, Snowflake, Fivetran, Sigma, and Atlan (or similar enterprise data platforms) is preferred
• AI-Native Development & Ops: Master-level capability directing AI-forward validation and deployment frameworks, setting branch benchmark policies for autonomous code generation loops, and designing division-level agent networks to eliminate manual infrastructure workflows
• Data Governance & Observability: Comprehensive expertise utilizing federated active metadata layers and predictive data trust telemetry to hardcode compliance logic natively into global platform environments and manage complex asset lifecycles
• Operational Communication & Collaboration: Superior capacity to successfully navigate high-pressure corporate environments and complex technical landscapes to secure functional consensus across competing business units, acting as an active change agent and thought leader for the DevOps and engineering communities
• Open to 50% hybrid reporting to Pleasanton campus

Workday Pay Transparency Statement

The annualized base salary ranges for the primary location and any additional locations are listed below. Workday pay ranges vary based on work location. As a part of the total compensation package, this role may be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission/bonus, as well as annual refresh stock grants. Recruiters can share more detail during the hiring process. Each candidate’s compensation offer will be based on multiple factors including, but not limited to, geography, experience, skills, job duties, and business need, among other things. For more information regarding Workday’s comprehensive benefits, please click here.

Our Approach to Flexible Work

With Flex Work, we’re combining the best of both worlds: in-person time and remote. Our approach enables our teams to deepen connections, maintain a strong community, and do their best work. We know that flexibility can take shape in many ways, so rather than a number of required days in-office each week, we simply spend at least half (50%) of our time each quarter in the office or in the field with our customers, prospects, and partners (depending on role). This means you'll have the freedom to create a flexible schedule that caters to your business, team, and personal needs, while being intentional to make the most of time spent together. Those in our remote "home office" roles also have the opportunity to come together in our offices for important moments that matter.

Pursuant to applicable Fair Chance law, Workday will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Workday is an Equal Opportunity Employer including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.

Workday is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals during our application process, in order to perform one or more essential functions of their job, as well as regarding the use of AI tools for employment decision-making to any degree. Please see below for more details including how to request an accommodation as a qualified veteran, due to a disability or for religious reasons, or as otherwise provided under applicable law.

Workday prohibits taking adverse action against any candidate or employee for reporting a possible violation of this policy, requesting one or more work accommodations, exercising a privacy right, or cooperating in an investigation in accordance with applicable law. Any employee who retaliates against a candidate or employee for doing so may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment, to the fullest extent allowable under applicable law.

If you require a reasonable accommodation, you may email [email protected], as far in advance as possible.

Are you being referred to one of our roles? If so, ask your connection at Workday about our Employee Referral process!

At Workday, we value our candidates’ privacy and data security. Workday will never ask candidates to apply to jobs through websites that are not Workday Careers.

Please be aware of sites that may ask for you to input your data in connection with a job posting that appears to be from Workday but is not.

In addition, Workday will never ask candidates to pay a recruiting fee, or pay for consulting or coaching services, in order to apply for a job at Workday.