Sr Software Engineer – API Platform, Product Engineering (Python/Typescript)

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

This team focuses on evolving the API surface and supporting mission-critical product flows used by Product Engineering for agentic AI use cases. We partner closely with internal Workday teams to design APIs and patterns that are consistent, reliable, scalable, and easy to consume.

You will help shape the API foundation, architecture, and operating model that makes it easy for Product Engineering to build agent-ready, high-quality APIs. This includes working on product capabilities end to end, from product and domain modeling through backend implementation, API endpoint design, testing, and production operations.

If you enjoy building products, services, and APIs that other engineers, customers, and AI agents love to use, you’ll feel at home on this team.

About the Role

As a Senior Software Development Engineer in Product Engineering, you'll help design and build the high-throughput, low-latency APIs and backend services that power Workday's next generation of products and agents.

You'll turn product requirements into scalable services, object models, and API endpoints, applying strong object-oriented design principles to build systems that are easy to maintain and extend over time. You'll also help shape how the team approaches API design, improve performance and observability across critical systems, and support the growth of engineers around you.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design and development of APIs, backend services, and platform features used across Product Engineering.
• Turn product requirements into clear service boundaries, domain models, and well-designed API endpoints, using OpenAPI and internal standards.
• Help expose product capabilities through REST, GraphQL, SOAP, and emerging integration patterns that work well for agents, internal teams, and external consumers.
• Improve performance and scalability through latency optimization, capacity planning, caching, and resiliency patterns for mission-critical flows.
• Build observability into product APIs - metrics, tracing, logging, and dashboards - and use that data to guide technical decisions.
• Support design reviews, code reviews, and technical documentation, and mentor junior and mid-level engineers.
• Participate in on-call and incident response, including root cause analysis and long-term fixes for significant issues.

About You

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum of 8 years of experience in software development engineering, architecting, building, and scaling robust and efficient software systems.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in software engineering, with hands-on experience in object-oriented modeling and software design concepts such as domain modeling, abstraction, encapsulation, extensibility, and maintainable service design.
• of experience designing API endpoints that expose product functionality clearly, consistently, securely, and at scale.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Other Qualifications

• Skilled in algorithmic thinking, including advanced data structures and algorithms such as graphs, concurrent data structures, and caching/eviction strategies, to design and optimize solutions for complex API orchestration, request routing, and high-throughput workloads.
• Solid experience with API development, including REST, SOAP, GraphQL, OpenAPI/Swagger-driven design, and designing and building scalable, secure APIs and API integration patterns.
• Experience creating API endpoints that map clearly to product functionality, domain concepts, and customer-facing workflows.
• Hands-on experience building and operating large-scale systems with complex product domains, high transaction volumes, and enterprise-grade reliability requirements.
• In-depth understanding of code testing methodologies, such as contract testing, performance testing, system testing, and integration testing, and experience with advanced testing tools or frameworks such as JUnit, ScalaTest, Postman, Mockito, Jacoco, or Scoverage.
• In-depth understanding of object-oriented design principles, including SOLID, abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, composition, and polymorphism.
• Practical experience applying domain-driven design concepts, object-oriented modeling, and common architectural patterns, such as layered architecture and hexagonal architecture, to scalable software systems.
• Solid understanding of software development principles and advanced development methodologies such as continuous delivery, trunk-based development, and test-driven or behavior-driven development.
• Solid experience with source control management tools such as Git and advanced branching and merging strategies across multiple teams or services.
• Demonstrated ability to lead team collaboration within a software development team and mentor junior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, technical guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing.
• Skilled technical writer, with experience producing comprehensive technical specifications, design documents, RFCs, API documentation, and integration best-practice guides.
• Experience using AI-assisted code generation and review tools, such as Cursor, Claude Code, or GitHub Copilot, to improve development speed and quality.
• Exposure to MCP or similar agent/tool integration models is a strong plus.

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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