Distinguished Architect - CTO

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 CTO Organization is the architectural heartbeat and strategic engine of Workday. Led by Gabe Monroy, this organization is responsible for the strategy and execution of the company’s global platform, spanning data, developer, and AI platforms, product engineering, core systems, and infrastructure. We are the stewards of Workday’s technical future, ensuring our foundation is as resilient as it is innovative.

We are currently leading Workday’s most significant technological pivot: the transition to an AI-native foundation. This mission involves building the "enterprise rails" for agentic AI—the APIs, data foundations, and high-stakes trust layers required to run autonomous agents safely and at scale across the global HR and Finance suite.

About the Role

As the principal technical advisor to the CTO, you will define the architectural North Star that drives Workday’s high-stakes transition into an AI-native powerhouse. You will be the mastermind behind Workday Illuminate, building the foundational enterprise rails for our next-generation Agentic AI platform and seamlessly integrating cutting-edge acquisitions into a unified technical fabric. Beyond orchestrating massive-scale distributed systems for maximum resilience and efficiency, you will define the rigorous ethical frameworks that ensure our autonomous, agent-mediated workflows remain highly secure and trustworthy. By championing these transformative roadmaps and mentoring our elite engineering talent, you will serve as a critical force multiplier who shapes the very future of enterprise technology.

Responsibilities

• Executive Technical Stewardship: Serve as the principal technical advisor to the CTO, defining the long-term architectural North Star for the core platform and Workday’s transition to an AI-native foundation.

• Strategic Vision & Advocacy: Articulate and defend high-stakes architectural roadmaps to the Board and senior executive leadership, directly linking deep-tech investments (like Agentic AI) to Workday’s market-defining competitive advantage.

• High-Impact Decisioning: Drive executive-level consensus on massive-scale transformations and strategic acquisitions, ensuring our technology stack remains a cohesive, world-class engine rather than a collection of silos.

• Ai Platform: Lead the fundamental design of Workday’s next-generation Agentic AI Platform, ensuring the "enterprise rails" are built to support reasoning, planning, and autonomous execution at global scale.

• Agentic Infrastructure Governance: Provide end-to-end architectural authority over the infrastructure required to host, orchestrate, and scale Intelligent Agents, ensuring conversational and workflow-driven AI is deeply integrated into the Workday core.

• Strategic M&A Integration: Architect the unified technical fabric that standardizes and scales technology from key acquisitions—including Sana, Paradox, and Evisort—into a seamless, high-performance experience within the core platform. This role will also serve as the central point of contact for all technical due diligence activities.

• Trust & Ethical AI Frameworks: Define the architectural standards for governed, explainable, and trustworthy AI, ensuring that agent-mediated workflows operating on Workday’s proprietary data maintain the highest levels of integrity and security.

• Systemic Resilience & Efficiency: Oversee the performance, stability, and unit economics of our most complex distributed systems, with a specific focus on optimizing latency and cost for large-scale LLM interactions and agentic workflows.

• Technical Diplomacy & Peer Leadership: Lead high-level design reviews across the entire engineering organization, ensuring that local team decisions align with the global strategic intent of the CTO organization.

• Force Multiplier & Mentor: Elevate the craft of engineering across Workday by mentoring the company’s most senior Principal and Staff Engineers, fostering a culture of architectural rigor and forward-thinking innovation.

About You

The ideal candidate is an experienced technologist who can work both independently and across teams. Skilled or has potential to excel in advanced implementations including distributed systems, application platforms, and persistence and operations at scale, with an added focus on AI infrastructure. Experienced in enterprise scale production rollout and support.

• Industry Eminence: 20+ years of software engineering and architecture experience, with a definitive track record of delivering mission-critical, enterprise-class products at global scale.

• Systems Leadership: 10+ years specifically dedicated to distributed system architecture and design, including lead roles in high-profile projects that are foundational to a company’s success.

• Executive Influence: Proven ability to command the room at the C-Suite and SVP level. You must be able to distill "black box" technical complexities into clear, strategic business narratives that drive investment and competitive advantage.

• Operational Stewardship: Deeply comfortable balancing the "innovation" of tomorrow with the "production" of today. You take personal accountability for the stability and success of systems serving 65M+ users.

• Architectural Diplomacy: A critical thinker who can dissect complex architectures and provide high-level constructive feedback, offering alternative paths that align with long-term platform strategy.

• Core Technical Mastery: Expert-level knowledge of highly available distributed systems, public cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), and the complexities of data integrity/regulatory compliance at scale.

• Communication Excellence: Superb written and verbal skills, with the ability to move seamlessly between deep-dive technical reviews with engineers and high-level strategy presentations for executives.

Other Qualifications

• AI/LLM Architecture: Demonstrated experience designing and scaling platforms for Agentic AI, GenAI, or LLM-based applications within a rigorous enterprise environment.

• Agentic Frameworks: A deep conceptual and practical understanding of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), conversational AI, and the orchestration layers required for autonomous software agents.

• Distributed Depth: Hands-on experience building or evolving distributed systems with an expert's grasp of scalability, persistence, and performance tuning.

• Technical Stack: High proficiency in Java and modern cloud-native toolsets.

• Community & Mentorship: A passion for being a "teacher-leader," with a proven ability to champion new technologies (like agentic frameworks) and mentor the next generation of Principal and Staff engineers.

• Education: BS in Computer Science or a related field; a Graduate degree (MS/PhD) is a strong plus but secondary to significant industry impact

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

 

Primary Location Base Pay Range: $288,000 USD - $432,000 USD

 

Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $247,000 USD - $432,000 USD

Additional Considerations:

If performed in Colorado, the pay range for this job is $260,000 - $390,000 USD based on min and max pay range for that role if performed in CO.

05/11/2026

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.

At Workday, we are committed to providing an accessible and inclusive hiring experience where all candidates can fully demonstrate their skills. If you require assistance or an accommodation at any point, please email accommodations@workday.com.

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Cloud software for financial and human capital management.