Principal Software Development Engineer, Developer Platform

Principal Software Development Engineer – Developer Platform

Location: USA, CA, Pleasanton

Remote Type: Flex

Time Type: Full Time

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.

The Developer Platform team is building the foundation for Workdays open developer ecosystem. We design and operate the platform capabilities, APIs, SDKs, and developer-facing services that enable external developers and partners to build on Workday products—including Peakon, Hired Score, VNDLY, and more. Our work sits at the intersection of platform engineering, developer experience, and product strategy: we set the standards that make the platform reliable, extensible, and easy to adopt at scale.

We partner closely with product, engineering leadership, and external stakeholders to prioritize high-leverage capabilities and translate long-term vision into phased, executable plans. We take our mission seriously, approach decisions with clarity and purpose, and make space for the kind of open technical debate that produces durable architecture. If you are energized by shaping technical direction, mentoring senior engineers, and representing a platform to developer audiences, you will find meaningful ownership, strong collaboration, and a team that enjoys building together.

As a Principal Software Development Engineer on the Developer Platform team, you will serve as a force multiplier for the organization—setting the technical vision for an open developer ecosystem and acting as a trusted advisor to engineering and product leadership on platform strategy, architecture, and long-term investment. You will define and drive the roadmap, lead API and SDK design at scale, and influence decisions that extend well beyond a single team or product line.

You will bring outsized organizational impact by raising the technical bar across a distributed engineering organization, establishing the standards that govern how Workday builds for external developers, and representing the platform to the broader developer community.

A key focus area for this role is leading the evolution of the Developer Portal front-end platform—from a monolithic UI into a set of decoupled, independently deployable applications with clear patterns for routing, state sharing, and application stitching.

In this role, you will:

• Define and drive the platform roadmap toward an open developer ecosystem, including API design, SDK frameworks, reusable component libraries, and extensibility primitives that enable third‑party developers and partners.
• Lead the technical strategy for the Developer Portal front-end platform, defining the architecture and shared patterns for splitting a monolithic UI into decoupled, independently deployable frontend applications, including routing, state sharing, and application stitching.
• Partner with product, engineering leadership, and external stakeholders to identify and prioritize platform capabilities that unlock new growth vectors.
• Establish and champion API governance, versioning strategy,…