Sr. Software Development Engineer
Workday is hiring a Sr. Software Development Engineer. It pays $176k-$264k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Workday.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this software engineer role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
- Pay on this posting starts 5% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- The posting mentions Sms, Whatsapp and Email among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Workday has 362 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Build, scale, and maintain enterprise messaging platforms and email delivery services within a core platform infrastructure team.
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.
About the Team
The Intelligent Experience Platform (IXP) team builds technology that powers a unified, intelligent, and seamless user experience across the Workday ecosystem. As part of Core Services within Workday's Platform organization, IXP delivers the foundational layers that every Workday application and agent is built on and every user interacts with. Through data-driven insights, cutting-edge technology, and strong cross-functional collaboration, the team multiplies the impact of every application team by delivering scalable, user-centric solutions and a cohesive, agent-ready foundation essential to Workday's next era of innovation. We are passionate about bringing industry-leading solutions to life while putting our people first—embracing new challenges with courage, and staying committed to delivering exceptional value for our customers.About the Role
As a Sr. Software Development Engineer on the IXP team, you will contribute to building, scaling, and maintaining Workday's messaging platform and services spanning SMS, WhatsApp, Push notifications, and Email. In this role, you will work closely with senior technical leaders to deliver robust, high-volume email delivery capabilities at enterprise scale across Workday's core messaging and email infrastructure.
You will design, develop, and operate high-performing, resilient, and secure microservices. Your contributions will directly impact how millions of users receive critical, timely communications from the Workday platform.
Key Responsibilities:
Design, implement, and maintain critical components of Workday's enterprise messaging and email platform in alignment with broader platform standards and architecture goals.
Develop and scale core multi-channel messaging services, templates, and deliverability infrastructure, adhering to established design patterns and best practices.
Collaborate effectively across Product Management, Design, Security, and engineering team members to deliver high-quality email capabilities.
Ensure code quality, security, performance, resilience, and testability across all owned platform services.
Participate in technology evaluations and third-party messaging and email provider integrations, build prototypes, and implement optimized solutions for email throughput and deliverability.
Help shape team engineering practices, participate in code and design reviews, and mentor junior engineers on the team.
About You
Basic Qualifications
- 8+ years of related software engineering experience, with deep expertise in building and operating high-scale distributed systems and platform services.
- 5+ years in modern programming languages (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Go, or C++), object-oriented design, REST/gRPC API development, automated testing, and CI/CD pipelines.
- 5+ year experience designing and building scalable distributed systems, including event-driven microservices or messaging platforms, following architectural best practices.
Other Qualifications
- Technical Execution and Strategy: Ability to execute on feature roadmaps and shape the technical direction of messaging services in alignment with platform team goals.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Track record of effective collaboration with product, design, and cross-functional engineering teams to deliver high-quality software features.
- Engineering Excellence: Commitment to writing clean, maintainable code with high standards for testing, performance, security, and operational reliability.
- Pragmatic Problem Solving: Strong analytical skills with a customer-centric focus, capable of building prototypes and evaluating trade-offs to balance feature velocity with platform quality.
- Teamwork and Mentorship: Experience contributing to code reviews, sharing knowledge, and helping onboard or mentor junior team members.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to explain technical details clearly to peers and collaborators.
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.CA.Pleasanton
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.
How we rate this
Sr. Software Development Engineer at Workday rates 20 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $176k
- Typical software engineer job
- $167k
This posting starts 5% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where software development was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where messaging platforms was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where scalability was part of your work. What did you do?
- Walk me through how you've used Sms in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Software Development, Messaging Platforms, Distributed Systems, Scalability, and Sms. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Want an expert to read your CV for this job?
Free. Send your CV and the role you want next. You get your review by email within 24 hours.
Get new software engineer jobs by email
One email a week with the new software engineer jobs, each rated for how much AI is in the work. No recruiter spam, unsubscribe in one click.
Free. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.
Similar roles
Software Engineering roles that involve little AI, at other companies.
What kind of AI work fits you?
Answer 12 practical questions in about three minutes. Get a simple profile, the work it points to, and live roles to explore next.
Find my next step