Prinicipal Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

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 Role

As a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer, you will bridge hands-on software development with high-impact customer technical strategy. You will partner with enterprise customers to architect, deploy, debug, and optimize Workday's AI agents and developer platform solutions within live customer environments.

Working across the full deployment lifecycle, you will collaborate with AI Deployment Architects, Product Managers, and Workday Services leads. Your primary objective is twofold: drive immediate customer success and eliminate implementation friction over time by embedding field-tested solutions back into the core platform.

What you'll do

• Technical Deployment & Engineering: Deploy, configure, and debug AI agents and integrations directly inside live enterprise tenant environments against complex customer workflows and real-world data.
• Customer Discovery & Solution Architecture: Lead technical discovery sessions with key customer stakeholders to translate complex business requirements into robust product configurations, POCs, and integration specs.
• Product Feedback Loop: Capture field telemetry, edge-case failures, and customer friction points to directly influence the core product roadmap and engineering backlog.
• Productization of Field Insights: Identify recurring deployment challenges and transform custom fixes into standardized, automated out-of-the-box product capabilities.
• Cross-Functional Ecosystem Alignment: Partner closely with Workday Services leads, AI Deployment Architects, and Account Teams to ensure seamless project delivery while staying focused on core product strength.
• Engagement Milestones & Graduation: Guide engagements through structured milestones-from kickoff to graduation-enabling self-sustaining customer ownership within standard 6-month deployment cycles.

Basic Qualifications

• Experience: 7+ years in Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Technical Consulting, or Software Development.
• Technical Execution: Hands-on coding and debugging skills (e.g., Python, Java, or similar) with solid understanding of REST APIs, object-oriented design, system architecture, and integration patterns.
• Customer Interaction: Proven experience working directly with enterprise clients on complex software deployments, live data troubleshooting, and custom workflow integration.

Other Qualifications

• Product Mindset: Ability to abstract generalizable product requirements from bespoke customer issues.
• Communication: Exceptional verbal and written technical communication skills; skilled at translating complex technical challenges for non-technical leadership.
• Ambiguity & Agility: Thrives in fast-paced environments with evolving requirements across Product, Engineering, and Services teams.
• Collaboration: Highly collaborative, low-ego team player adept at working within multi-disciplinary account and delivery pods.

Preferred Qualifications

• Applied experience with LLM-powered or agentic AI systems - e.g., prompt/context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, evaluations, or agent orchestration frameworks - and a working understanding of how model behavior shows up as product and customer-facing issues in the field.

Pay and benefits

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

Primary Location: USA.CA.Pleasanton

Primary Location Base Pay Range

$206,400 USD - $309,600 USD

Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range

$173,300 USD - $309,600 USD

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.

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.

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