Principal, Software Engineer (Distributed Systems)

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

The team provides platforms that process 100s of terabytes of data that enable core Workday products and use cases like core HCM, Fins, AI/ML skus, internal data products and Observability. If you enjoy writing efficient software or tuning and scaling large distributed systems you will enjoy working with us.

Do you want to tackle exciting challenges at massive scale across private and public clouds for our 10000+ global customers? Do you want to work with world class engineers and facilitate the development of the next generation Distributed systems platforms? If so, we should chat.

About the Role

The Messaging, Streaming and Caching team is a full-service Distributed Systems Engineering team. We architect and provide async messaging, streaming, and NoSQL platforms and solutions that power the Workday products and SKUs ranging from core HCM, Fins, Integrations, and AI/ML. We develop client libraries and SDK’s that make it easy for teams to build Workday products. We develop automation to deploy and run hundreds of clusters, and we also operate and tune our clusters as well. As a team member you will play a key role in improving our services and encouraging their adoption within Workday's infrastructure both in our private cloud and public cloud. As a member of this team you will design and build new capabilities from inception to deployment to exploit the full power of the core middleware infrastructure and services, and work hand in hand with our application and service teams!

Primary Responsibilities

• Design, build, and enhance critical distributed services, including Kafka, Redis, RabbitMQ etc.
• Design, develop, build, deploy and maintain core distributed services using a combination of open source and proprietary stacks across diverse infrastructure environments (Kubernetes, OpenStack, Bare Metal, etc.)
• Design and develop core software modules for streaming, messaging and caching.
• Build observability modules, alerts and automation for Dashboard lifecycle management for the distributed services.
• Build, deploy and operate infrastructure components in production environments.
• Champion all aspects of streaming, messaging and caching with a focus on resiliency and operational excellence.
• Evaluate and implement new open-source and cloud-native tools and technologies as needed.
• Participate in the on-call rotation to support the distributed systems platforms.
• Manage and optimize Workday distributed services in AWS, GCP & Private cloud env.

About You

Basic Qualification

• 12+ years experience in software development engineering.
• 6+ years experience specifically focused on designing, building, and operating distributed systems like Redis, Kafka, RabbitMQ or NoSQL solutions.
• 5+ experience in designing and implementing complex distributed system architectures, evidenced by successful deployment of systems with high availability (e.g., 99.99% uptime) and fault tolerance.
• 8+ years experience with at least two of the following programming languages (e.g., Java, Python, Go, C/C++), including experience in writing production-level code for distributed systems.
• Expertise with configuration management using Chef and service deployment on Kubernetes via Helm and ArgoCD
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline; a Master's degree (e.g., MS in Computer Science, Distributed Systems, or related field) is strongly preferred or equivalent practical experience.

Other Qualification

• Expert-level ability in Algorithmic Thinking, including CAP theorem, queuing theory, consensus protocols etc, to architect highly efficient and scalable solutions for complex distributed systems implementations.
• Deep expertise in API and Client Library Development, including understanding of RESP protocol, Kafka wire protocol etc and extensive experience in designing and building API layer as well as client libraries.
• Experience building cloud native controllers for distributed systems. Familiarity with operator like Strimzi would be a bonus
• Strong understanding of modern Code Testing methodologies like consistency / linearizability testing, and experience in leading chaos and and fault injection testing strategies.
• Deep understanding of Distributed Systems Software principles, including fault tolerance, high availability, and extensive experience in replication / sharding techniques
• Proven ability to design and implement High Availability strategies for critical distributed systems, including global replication with 99.99% SLOs.
• Extensive experience with Large Scale Data Processing technologies and frameworks such as Kafka/Redis/RabbitMQ/Spark/Flink etc within complex distributed architectures.
• Strong understanding of Object-Oriented Design (OOD) principles and architectural patterns for building highly scalable and maintainable distributed systems.
• Extensive experience with SCM and CI/CD tools such as Git, Jenkins, Harness etc and establishing best practices for collaborative distributed development workflows.
• Strong understanding of System Security principles and best practices relevant to securing complex distributed environments, including implementing authentication and authorization modules.
• Experience learning complex open source service internals via code inspection.
• Proven ability to lead Team Collaboration within and across distributed software development teams and drive architectural direction.
• Strong skills in creating Technical Writing Documentation and presenting to senior leadership as well as architects within the company.

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.

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