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.
If you’re looking to apply your experience to meaningful, mission-driven work—alongside colleagues who take pride in building things that last—you’ll find that opportunity at Workday
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).
May be required to be on site at client locations in the DC, MD, and VA (DMV) area.
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).
The Messaging, Streaming and Caching team is a full-service Distributed Systems Engineering team. We architect and provide async messaging, streaming, and NoSQL platforms and solutions that power the Workday products and SKUs ranging from core HCM, FIN, Integrations, and AI/ML. We develop client libraries and SDK's that make it easy for teams to build Workday products. We develop automation to deploy and run hundreds of clusters, and we also operate and tune our clusters as well. As a team member you will play a key role in improving our services and encouraging their adoption within Workday's infrastructure both in our private cloud and public cloud. As a member of this team, you will design and build new capabilities from inception to deployment to exploit the full power of the core middleware infrastructure and services, and work hand in hand with our application and service teams!
Role & Responsibilities
Design, build, and enhance critical distributed services, including Kafka, Redis, RabbitMQ etc.
Design, develop, build, deploy and maintain core distributed services using a combination of open source and proprietary stacks across diverse infrastructure environments (Kubernetes, OpenStack, Bare Metal, etc.).
Design and develop core software modules for streaming, messaging and caching.
Construct observability modules, alerts and automation for Dashboard lifecycle management for the distributed services.
Build, deploy and operate infrastructure components in production environments.
Champion all aspects of streaming, messaging and caching with a focus on resiliency and operational excellence.
Evaluate and implement new open-source and cloud-native tools and technologies as needed.
Participate in the on-call rotation to support the distributed systems platforms.
Manage and optimize Workday within the U.S. AWS cloud regions, forming the core of the team responsible for this mission.
Partner with the Workday Federal Cyber Defense team to ensure security operations, cybersecurity posture, governance, risk, compliance, and platform security health.
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.
You are a software engineer with distributed systems background and experience in systems like Kafka, Redis or RabbitMQ. You have independently developed features and deployed them to large scale distributed systems clusters.
Basic Qualifications
MUST BE A US CITIZEN
A minimum of 10 years of distributed systems experience
A minimum of 10 years of software engineering and systems, infrastructure or platforms experience.
A minimum of 10 years experience using one or more of the following: Ruby, Golang, Python, Java, Scala.
A minimum 10 years experience working on US Federal projects
Familiarity or prior experience operating large scale SaaS platforms.
Good systems and networking expertise working on hybrid environments, both on-premise and cloud
Other Qualifications
Experience in developing distributed system software and deployments that perform well and degrade gracefully under excessive load.
Experience with configuration management using Chef and service deployment on Kubernetes via Helm and ArgoCD.
Development experience with a wide range of programming languages, for example, Java, C/C++, Erlang, Python, Golang, etc.
Ability and willingness to learn complex open source service internals via code inspection.
Experience with current software development tools including CI/CD and methodologies like Agile
Strong written and oral communication skills and the ability to explain esoteric technical details clearly to partners outside of the team
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.
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