Sr Director, Software Development Engineering

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

Workday is the enterprise AI platform for people, money, and agents. The Infrastructure and Production Engineering team (IPE) delivers it all with industry leading solutions to deploy, handle, secure and scale Workday reliably across the entire globe. We solve some of the companies hardest problems and joining our team affords you the opportunity of a life time to advance your career at one of the worlds premiere enterprise SaaS providers.

Whether you thrive by solving sophisticated business problems, collaborating with agile teams, or championing innovation, Workday offers an environment where your talents can grow. Our engineering team leads compute and network, performance and reliability, security and privacy supporting 100s of products and services to 10,000 customers worldwide.

Our winning technology is built on an outstanding culture, core values, and dedication to excellence. We're proud to have received numerous awards for outstanding workplace culture, and commitment to sustainability and we are looking for talented people world-wide.

About the Role

As the Senior Director, Capacity and Cloud Analytics Engineering, you will be responsible for defining the global strategic vision for Workday’s capacity engineering  and cost optimization initiatives across private and public clouds. This critical leadership role sits within the Infrastructure and Production Engineering (IPE) organization and is tasked with establishing the long-term roadmap for production capacity optimization services as well as the Data Engineering and Analytics Platform powering Workday’s infrastructure management strategy.

You will operate at the intersection of infrastructure strategy, financial planning, and sophisticated data engineering, ensuring alignment across all major product lines and cloud infrastructure investments. You will lead the organization responsible for building scalable data systems, producing executive-grade analytics, and delivering automation crucial for optimizing cost and performance across Workday’s entire public cloud footprint.

This role requires a leader who can drive transformation, influence executive collaborators (VPs/SVPs), and drive engineering rigor across a diverse, global organization

Key Responsibilities

• Define, implement, and cultivate the global strategy and multi-year roadmap for cloud cost governance, infrastructure optimization, and capacity engineering, ensuring maximum value extraction from Workday’s cloud investments.

• Drive alignment and accountability as a key strategic partner and advisor to Workday’s Executive Leadership (VPs, SVPs) in technical and business functions to define cloud investment priorities and drive enterprise-wide financial accountability for cloud spend.

• Provide executive leadership and mentorship to a global organization of Directors, Senior Managers, Data Engineers, FinOps Data Analysts, and DevOps professionals, ensuring the delivery of high-impact optimization solutions at scale.

• Drive groundbreaking Change leading multi-functional initiatives to integrate FinOps principles across Workday, applying our data platform capabilities to drive large-scale behavioral and architectural changes related to cloud usage.

• Elevate engineering excellence coordinating the advancement of host, pod, container and JVM runtime optimization initiatives globally. In doing so, maintain a significant data modeling and analytics platform used by all development and finance teams across the company

• Foster a strong culture of ownership, innovation, and open-source teamwork within the organization and across technical partners.

• Represent the organization’s vision and strategic progress clearly to audiences at all levels, including executive steering committees and financial leadership.

About You

Basic Qualifications

• 15+ years leading sophisticated engineering organizations, with at least 5 years managing Directors or leading multi-disciplinary organizations responsible for global platform strategy.

• A consistent and verifiable record of building, scaling, and retaining top engineering talent for a high velocity team.

• 7+ years as a Software Engineer or hands-on technical contributor, demonstrating deep understanding of platform infrastructure.

• Extensive experience (5+ years) working with AWS/GCP public cloud services in a capacity/FinOps context.

• Demonstrated deep practical knowledge of FinOps principles and proven success in optimizing cloud usage and spend at a substantial scale.

• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with experience presenting complex technical and financial strategy to executive and executive-level audiences.

• Master’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).

Other Qualifications

• Experience handling organizations with significant contribution to or management of open-source projects.

• Deep familiarity with modern data frameworks (dbt, Airflow, Spark) and data modeling/warehouse platforms.

• Extensive exposure to observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog) and SQL query engines (Trino/Presto, Delta Lake, or Hive).

• Expertise in cloud deployment practices including GitOps, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and CI/CD.

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.

Primary Location: USA.CA.Pleasanton
 

Primary Location Base Pay Range: $281,600 USD - $422,400 USD
 

Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $231,800 USD - $422,400 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.

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.

At Workday, we are committed to providing an accessible and inclusive hiring experience where all candidates can fully demonstrate their skills. If you require assistance or an accommodation at any point, please email [email protected].

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