Principal Software Engineer (ML/AI) – Machine Learning

Job Description

Principal, Machine Learning Software Engineer, Admin Central | Workday

The Tone:
This is a full-time hybrid role at Workday, with a primary location in Pleasanton, CA, allowing for flexible work. Workday builds a leading AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, actively shaping the future of work for global teams. This Principal Software Engineer role is crucial for transforming how administrators use Workday by building intelligent, unified experiences from the ground up, moving implementations from human effort to platform-powered intelligence.

The TL;DR
• Role: Full Time
• Type: Full-time
• Location: Hybrid – Pleasanton, CA
• Pay: $190600–$342000 yearly
• Team: Admin Central team, focused on ML/AI platform engineering
• Mission: Lead the architecture and implementation of Workday’s next-generation AI platforms and autonomous agent frameworks.
• Tech Stack: Python, AWS, cloud-native tech, Java, Go, Scala, Kafka, Spark, Flink, ClickHouse, Iceberg, PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, LangSmith, LlamaIndex, NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, Kubernetes, Docker, PostgreSQL, Redis

What You’ll Actually Do
• Agentic AI & Orchestration: Design, implement, and maintain advanced agentic capabilities, including tool calling, multi-agent workflows, and human-in-the-loop integrations.
• Scalable ML Infrastructure: Build secure, high-throughput REST services and event-driven data pipelines using Python, AWS, and cloud-native technologies.
• MLOps & Enterprise Reliability: Establish end-to-end MLOps standards, including CI/CD automation, observability, and model monitoring for production-resilient systems.
• Technical & Strategic Leadership: Partner with software engineers, Product Managers, and other stakeholders to translate ambiguous business needs into scalable technical designs and long-term data-governance strategies.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience) with a focus on ML development and R&D leadership.
• Experience: 12+ years in ML development and R&D leadership, including 8+ years with advanced ML methodologies, distributed frameworks, and cloud-based platforms. Also, 6+ years building and hosting scalable ML services and data pipelines, and 4+ years with LLMs, generative AI, and autonomous agent frameworks.
• Skills: Expert in high-throughput streaming and real-time feature extraction for large-scale ML pipelines. Deep knowledge of deep learning, LLM orchestration, RAG, agentic systems, and Model-Based Design. Proven ability to lead exploratory data analysis, manage high-dimensional embeddings, and deploy domain-specific foundation models at scale.
• Bonus: Master’s or PhD in a relevant field is strongly preferred. Exceptional collaboration and mentoring skills, including technically leading cross-functional pods and translating technical decisions for executives.