Sr Active Defense Engineer

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

Our Active Defense team is a group of highly skilled and dedicated professionals who are passionate about protecting our organization from cyber threats. We source, evaluate, and analyze both internal and external data, providing critical insight to a variety of security and business teams. We use emerging and relevant intelligence to test our defenses rapidly. We perform detailed analysis while meeting the challenge to scale to the business' needs. We are a core function of the overall Cyber Defense organization at Workday that helps keep the company and its customer data safe every day.
Our team members have a strong background in cybersecurity, data analysis, AI and machine learning, offensive security and detection engineering. We use innovative tools and technologies to analyze and visualize data, including Splunk, Spark, Python, and AI-assisted analysis and automation tools. We value teamwork and collaborate closely with other security teams to ensure that our organization stays ahead of emerging cyber threats.

About the Role

As a member of the Active Defense team, you will get an opportunity to collaborate with a large cross-section of teams across Workday to understand the threat landscape, execute threat hunting and offensive security exercises and discover potential vulnerabilities. You will test detection coverage, perform gap analysis and then use this information to develop and refine alerting logic. You will also help develop adaptive and AI-assisted detection and response capabilities.

About You

Basic Qualifications

• 8+ years of proven abilities in one or more of: incident response, intelligence analysis, vulnerability assessment, security engineering or security operations

• Experience researching cybersecurity threats and creating security solutions

• Experience using AI-based discovery and exploit creation tools to mimic adversary capabilities.

• Experience in a general-purpose programming language like Python, Java, Kotlin, Scala, or JavaScript

Other Qualifications

• Experience responding to cybersecurity incidents and helping to mitigate threats

• Experience executing red team engagements and bypassing security controls

• Experience reverse engineering malware, suspicious code and vulnerabilities

• Experience developing or applying agents, automation, or workflow orchestration to create or improve detection and response workflows

• Enthusiastic about new emerging topics in security/intelligence, data science and/or machine learning

• Dedication to maintain domain proficiency and a professional network with our partners and other interest groups

• Strong communication skills and an ability to present technical information to a non-technical audience

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.VA.RestonPrimary Location Base Pay Range: $159,600 USD - $239,400 USDAdditional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $144,400 USD - $258,000 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.

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 View email address on aiapply.co , as far in advance as possible.

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