From day one, you’ll be part of a team that values collaboration, follow-through, and doing the right thing—especially when the stakes are high. Our culture is grounded in integrity, respect, and shared responsibility. We challenge each other to think clearly, act thoughtfully, and build solutions that stand up to real-world demands. Here, curiosity is matched with accountability. Ambition is paired with trust. You’ll have the space to do your best work, the support to keep growing, and the backing of a company committed to long-term investment in both its people and the federal mission.
We are a distributed team that builds cloud-scale services that power the Workday home page and search experience for tens of millions of users across the world. We're on a mission to deliver a smart, personalized experience that helps people work more efficiently. We work across the full stack, from frontend to backend, and partner closely with infrastructure teams to keep our services healthy and performant for customers around the world.
We use modern technologies, clean code, and automated testing to ensure long-term success. If you're passionate about enhancing user experiences, thrive in a full-stack environment, and take pride in high-quality, reliable code, join our dedicated, high-performing team—Apply Now!
About the Role
This role will support one or more direct or indirect contracts with the U.S. Federal Government which, due to federal government security requirements, mandates that all Workday personnel working on the contracts be United States citizens (naturalized or native).
Employees may be required to be on site at client locations in the DC, MD, and VA (DMV) area
We're seeking driven problem solvers who thrive in a fast-paced environment, delivering customer value quickly and making an impact. Ideal candidates will be exceptionally strong individual contributors, self-starters who tackle complex problems, create innovative solutions, and mentor others. You'll collaborate with Product Managers, UX, design, and research to solve real user challenges for Workday's highest-security US Federal customers.
As a Senior Software Development Engineer in IxP, you will
Write and maintain robust, efficient, and testable code using top-tier languages, frameworks, and tools—for example, TypeScript, Kotlin, Python, Rust, Spring, Webflux, Node.js, Express, React, and Cypress. This list is illustrative of the current stack, not a checklist every candidate must fully match.
Support services and customers in specific high-security airgapped environments from frontend to backend.
Design and lead meaningful features with a strong focus on non-functional requirements (scalability, performance, monitoring, maintenance, security, usability and quality, etc.).
Own the day-to-day operations of services you build, including on-call support, in close partnership with infrastructure and service teams.
Balance feature delivery speed with system reliability, using well-defined service-level objectives (SLOs) to guide tradeoffs and prioritize work.
Be a flexible teammate as part of a fast-paced product development team.
Provide technical influence within the team, with ability to lead technical & functional discussions.
Suggest enhancements for the product and build pipelines.
Operate as a self-starter who can effectively manage numerous projects simultaneously, meet aggressive deadlines, and thrive in a multifaceted environment. You can expect a high-profile position on a great team with many challenges and rewards.
About You
This role may require a security clearance at the TS/SCI w/CI Poly level. Applicants must have the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government issued security clearance. An active TS/SCI w/CI Poly is preferred.
Basic Qualifications - Sr. (P4) SDE
US Citizenship is required
7+ years of professional software engineering experience designing, building, and deploying secure, high-throughput enterprise systems with multi-functional teams.
4+ years of hands-on production experience developing backend services using Java or Kotlin (via Spring Boot or similar JVM frameworks) and 3+ years using TypeScript (browser or Node.js).
3+ years in a technical leadership role (Tech Lead / Lead Engineer) leading complex initiatives end-to-end (delivering 3+ multi-quarter projects) and setting architectural direction.
3+ years of direct operational ownership for critical, customer-facing production services (99.9%+ availability), including active on-call rotation participation and SLA/SLO-driven performance management (p95/p99 latency, MTTR).
Basic Qualifications (P3 SDE)
5+ years of professional software engineering experience building, testing, and deploying enterprise-level applications as part of an agile software engineering team.
3+ years of production backend development experience using Java or Kotlin (via Spring Boot or similar JVM frameworks) and 2+ years using TypeScript (browser or Node.js).
2+ years of experience leading technical feature delivery end-to-end—delivering at least 2 multi-month projects from technical design through production deployment.
2+ years of direct operational ownership for customer-facing production services (99.5%+ availability), including active participation in an on-call rotation and working within defined SLAs/SLOs.
Other Qualifications
Experience on an Operations or DevOps team is a plus.
Bachelor's/Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; or equivalent professional experience.
3+ years of hands-on experience with containerization, orchestration, and automated pipelines using Docker, Kubernetes, Gradle, and enterprise CI/CD systems.
Demonstrated track record of technical communication, including authoring or reviewing 10+ production-grade artifacts (e.g., System Design Docs, Architecture Decision Records [ADRs], or Disaster Recovery Runbooks).
Experience formalizing engineering best practices, driving design reviews, and directly mentoring 3+ mid/junior engineers.
Experience managing production systems against strict error budgets and automated incident post-mortem workflows.
Knowledge of Workday XpressO and Internal Code Lifecycle Development in Workday is a plus.
Experience developing distributed and concurrent systems; secure, fault tolerant, highly available, recoverable, consistent, scalable, and predictable and the tradeoffs therein
Strong focus on performance, scalability, and security of services.
Experienced in collaborating with diverse teams in a fast-paced, Scrum-based environment.
Proven troubleshooting and triaging skills to resolve escalated production and customer issues.
Skilled in turning ambiguous problems into clear solutions.
Able to balance priorities and communicate cross-functionally.
Strong written and verbal communication with technical and non-technical audiences.
Familiarity with multiple programming languages and paradigms is a plus.
Preferred DoD 8570/8140 compliant with at least IAT Level II certification, including a current Computing Environment (CE) credential and one approved specialty certification (e.g., CompTIA CySA+, GICSP, CASP+)
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.Reston
Primary Location Base Pay Range: $163,800 USD - $245,800 USD
Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $148,200 USD - $264,000 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 accommodations@workday.com, as far in advance as possible.
Are you being referred to one of our roles? If so, ask your connection at Workday about our Employee Referral process!
At Workday, we value our candidates’ privacy and data security. Workday will never ask candidates to apply to jobs through websites that are not Workday Careers.
Please be aware of sites that may ask for you to input your data in connection with a job posting that appears to be from Workday but is not.
In addition, Workday will never ask candidates to pay a recruiting fee, or pay for consulting or coaching services, in order to apply for a job at Workday.
