Sr Active Defense Engineer

Overview

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—in the products we build and 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 teams 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. 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.

Our Active Defense team is a group of highly skilled professionals who protect our organization from cyber threats. We source, evaluate, and analyze internal and external data to provide critical insight to security and business teams. We use emerging and relevant intelligence to test our defenses rapidly, perform detailed analysis, and scale to the business needs. We are a core function of the Cyber Defense organization at Workday, helping keep the company and customer data safe daily.

As a member of the Active Defense team, you will 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 develop and refine alerting logic. You will also help develop adaptive and AI-assisted detection and response capabilities.

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 Java Script

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, data science and/or machine learning
• Dedication to maintain domain proficiency and a professional network with partners and other interest groups
• Strong communication skills and the ability to present technical information to a non-technical audience

The annualized base salary ranges for the primary location and any additional locations are listed below. Pay ranges vary based on work location. As 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 stock grants. Recruiters can share more detail during the hiring process. Compensation offers are based on geography, experience, skills, job duties, and business needs.

For more information regarding Workday’s benefits, please .

• Primary
  
  Location:
  
  USA.VA.Reston
• Primary Location Base Pay Range: $159,600 USD - $239,400 USD
• Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $144,400 USD - $258,000 USD

With Flex Work, we combine in-person time and remote work. Our approach helps teams deepen connections, maintain community, and do their best work. Flexibility can take shape…