Principal AI Engineer

As a Principal AI Engineer in Agent Factory, you’ll design and build the core ML systems behind Workday’s next generation of AI agents. Working within a small, senior, cross-functional pod, you’ll own how models, agent logic, and orchestration layers come together in production—across the full lifecycle from problem framing and data strategy to deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement. You’ll implement and evolve frameworks for LLM-powered agents, including RAG pipelines, workflow orchestration, evaluation, and feedback loops, ensuring solutions are scalable, observable, and enterprise-ready. This role sits at the intersection of ML and platform engineering: partnering closely with software engineers, product managers, and data scientists to integrate agents deeply into the Workday stack. You’ll stay hands-on with emerging techniques in agentic architectures while applying strong engineering judgment to turn them into systems that are reliable, explainable, and built to operate at global scale.

About You

Basic Qualifications

10+ years experience as a member of a data science, machine learning engineering, or other relevant software development team building applied machine learning products at scale, including taking products through applied research, design, implementation, production, and production-based evaluation

4+ years of professional experience in machine learning and deep learning frameworks & toolkits such as Pytorch, TensorFlow

6+ years of professional experience in building services to host machine learning models in production at scale

3+ years of demonstrated experience working with large language models (LLMs), text generation models, and/or graph neural network models for real-world use cases

6+ years of proven experience with cloud computing platforms (e.g. AWS, GCP, etc.)

Proven track record of successfully leading, mentoring, and/or managing ML Engineering teams, taking ownership of development lifecycle and sprint planning; fostering a culture of collaboration, transparency, innovation, and continuous improvement

Bachelor’s (Master’s or PhD preferred) degree in engineering, computer science, physics, math or equivalent

Other Qualifications:

Stay up to date with advancements in AI, LLMs, RAG, autonomous agents and orchestration frameworks to drive innovation

Deep understanding of statistical analysis, unsupervised and supervised machine learning algorithms, and natural language processing for information retrieval and/or recommendation system use cases

Professional experience in independently solving ambiguous, open-ended problems and technically leading teams

Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to build strong relationships across teams and stakeholders

Workday Pay Transparency Statement

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.

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.

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If you require a reasonable accommodation, you may email accommodations@workday.com, as far in advance as possible.

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