Principal, Software Engineer (Distributed Systems) (Atlanta)

About the Role

We are seeking an expert AI Agent Principal Engineer who will serve as a lead engineer for a multi-functional team building ground‑breaking AI agents for HR & Finance. This role is critical in defining the tooling strategy, staying ahead of industry trends, and ensuring our AI solutions seamlessly integrate deeply within the Workday stack. You will be responsible for evaluating and selecting AI frameworks, orchestrating agent workflows, and using LLMs, automation frameworks, and enterprise AI technologies to design and develop scalable, reliable and trusted AI agents for both the HR and Finance. You will lead a team of engineers to quickly iterate on strategic agentic solutions for HR and Finance.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead a high performing team of innovative engineers to deliver AI‑powered agents that integrate deeply into HR and Financial workflows, accelerating intelligent decision making.
• Understanding of AI Lifecycle: Extensive knowledge of the AI system lifecycle, including problem definition, data acquisition, model training, system integration, and validation.
• Evaluate, select, and integrate AI tools, frameworks, and platforms to ensure scalability, efficiency, and compliance.
• Stay up to date with advancements in AI, LLMs, RAG, autonomous agents and orchestration frameworks to drive innovation.
• Work with product, engineering, and data science teams to innovate and implement AI‑based automation solutions that enhance HR and financial operations.
• Collaborate with external AI vendors, cloud providers, and open‑source communities to bring the best‑in‑class technologies into our AI stack.
• Establish monitoring, feedback loops, and continuous learning mechanisms to improve agent performance over time.
• Committed to revolutionizing the industry with AI technologies in HCM and Financial systems.
• Build responsible AI into our Agent Factory pipeline supporting various systems.

Basic Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience with product engineering leading the development and delivery of highly available cloud products.
• 5+ years proven experience in AI, machine learning, or intelligent automation, with a focus on enterprise applications.
• 2+ years experience with LLMs, AI agents, and orchestration frameworks (e.g. LangGraph).
• 5+ years experience with Python, cloud AI services (AWS, Azure, GCP), and AI model deployment.

Other Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in a relevant field, such as Computer Science, Mathematics, or Engineering.
• Experience with enterprise‑grade AI architectures, API integration, and large‑scale automation.
• Hands‑on experience with vector databases, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), and fine‑tuning LLMs.
• Proven track record to tackle sophisticated business challenges by translating them into innovative, AI‑powered solutions that drive measurable results.
• Experience with data privacy, security, and compliance for AI in enterprise environments.
• Experience developing and deploying machine learning solutions using large‑scale datasets, including specification design, data collection and labeling, model development, validation, deployment, and ongoing monitoring.
• Experience with fine‑tuning AI models including identifying and curating datasets as well as experimenting with models for iterative improvement.

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. 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.

Primary Location: USA.GA.Atlanta
Primary Location Base Pay Range: $197,000 USD – $295,400 USD
Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $187,100 USD – $334,300 USD
Additional Considerations: If performed in Colorado, the pay range for this job is $197,000 – $295,400 USD based on min and max pay range for that role if performed in CO.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Workday is an Equal Opportunity Employer including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans. Pursuant to applicable Fair Chance law, Workday will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Individuals seeking employment at Workday are considered without regard to age, ancestry, color, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, protected family care or medical leave status, race, religion (including beliefs and practices or the absence thereof), sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. Further, pursuant to applicable local ordinances, Workday will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Workday is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities, disabled veterans, and others during our application process. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability or for religious reasons, contact us at View email address on apply.placed-app.com.