Senior Software Development Engineer - Distributed Systems

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

We are an infrastructure engineering team within Workday’s observability organisation. Engineering teams worldwide rely on our platform to monitor and operate their production systems.

What we own: Metrics ingestion and alerting infrastructure, from the pipelines that collect and process metrics to the platform services that detect issues and deliver notifications

How we build: Distributed systems at scale across Workday’s global production environments, with a focus on reliability and long-term operability Agentic engineering:We build tooling and agent-facing interfaces that help engineers and AI agents understand and operate the platform, and we use them in our own day-to-day work.

How we work: Close collaboration with partner teams across engineering and site reliability, with engineers taking end-to-end ownership of the problems they solve., We build and operate observability infrastructure for metrics ingestion and alerting across Workday’s global production environments. You will work on distributed systems at scale, collecting, processing, and acting on operational data, with a focus on reliability, performance, and simplicity. You will also contribute to agentic engineering, building tools and workflows that help engineers and AI agents operate the platform more effectively. In this role, you will:

• Design, build, and debug distributed systems across cloud-native production environments
• Develop platform services for metrics ingestion, processing, and alerting at scale
• Shape how AI agents interact with observability infrastructure through tooling, APIs, and operational workflows
• Collaborate across teams to deliver infrastructure that is resilient, observable, and easy to operate

Basic Qualification

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience with production-grade systems
• 5+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems on public or private clouds
• Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including concurrency, fault tolerance, high availability, and failure-mode analysis
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Other Qualification

• Agentic Engineering:Interest or experience building MCP servers, agent-facing APIs, or tooling that helps engineers and AI systems operate complex platforms
• Metrics & Observability Platforms:Experience with Prometheus-style monitoring ecosystems, time-series metrics pipelines, or large-scale observability platforms in production
• Go & Python:Strong proficiency in Go for production services; experience with Python for tooling, automation, data processing, or ML workloads
• API & Architecture:Experience designing and implementing robust, scalable HTTP and gRPC APIs in multi-tenant environments
• Kubernetes & Infrastructure as Code:Experience deploying and operating services on Kubernetes using infrastructure-as-code and platform configuration workflows such as Helm, Jsonnet, Terraform, or GitOps-style deployment pipelines
• Quality & Testing:Strong testing discipline across unit, integration, and end-to-end tests for distributed systems
• Collaboration & Leadership:Demonstrated ability to own problems end-to-end, work closely with SRE and partner engineering teams, and mentor other engineers
• Technical Communication:Excellent written communication skills for architecture designs, operational runbooks, and technical documentation

Workday Pay Transparency Statement (For EU Locations Only)

Listed below is the base salary range applicable to this position. Workday pay ranges (and the precise pay offered to the successful candidate) are based on a number of objective criteria such as relevant experience and skills, and educational qualifications, level of responsibility, demands of the role, work location and business need. 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 awarded by Workday Inc. For more information regarding Workday’s comprehensive benefits, please click here.

Primary Location Base Pay Range: €96,000 EUR - €144,000 EUR Ireland

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 accommodation, 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.