Principal Distributed Systems Engineer Observability

Your work days are brighter here.

Were 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 were shaping the future of work so teams can reach their potential and focus on what matters most. The minute you join youll 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. Were 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 youre building smarter solutions supporting customers or creating a space where everyone belongs youll do meaningful work with Workmates whove got your return well 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 youve found a match in Workday and we hope to be a match for you too.

About the Team

The Data Platform and Observability Engineering (DPOE) team is building Workdays next-generation multi-petabyte scale Observability Platform. We own the libraries distributed services and infrastructure that power ingestion storage and query across the observability stack Iceberg ClickHouse Tempo Grafana S3 Kafka and Elasticsearch serving traces metrics and logs for every workload at Workday. Our roadmap directly shapes how the company detects diagnoses and eventually predicts operational issues at scale.

About the Role

To own the technical vision and architecture for distributed tracing as a first-class pillar of Workdays Observability Platform built on ClickHouse and/or Grafana Tempo backed by a big-data pipeline (Kafka Spark/Flink Iceberg Clickhouse TempoS3) running on AWS. This is a hands-on high-autonomy role for an engineer who can design and build multi-petabyte low-latency tracing infrastructure end-to-end and who is equally excited to help define where Observability AI goes next: using traces logs and metrics as the substrate for automated root-cause analysis anomaly detection and AI-driven incident triage.

Youll set technical direction across multiple teams mentor senior and staff engineers and act as the primary architect and escalation point for the tracing subsystem from ingestion and storage design through query performance and platform reliability.

• Architect and build Workdays distributed tracing platform on ClickHouse/Tempo designed for multi-petabyte scale ingestion and sub-second interactive query performance.
• Own the big-data pipeline feeding tracing data Kafka-based ingestion Spark/Flink stream and batch processing and Iceberg-on-S3 storage including schema design partitioning compaction and lifecycle management.
• Drive performance and scaling across ingestion and query paths: storage format optimization (Parquet/Iceberg) compression strategy partitioning/indexing and query engine tuning under real production load.
• Lead HA/DR design for tracing services multi-region/multi-AZ resilience failover backup/restore and recovery time/point objectives appropriate to a tier-1 platform.
• Design security architecture for the platform including authentication/authorization (authn/authz) for multi-tenant data access across ingestion and query layers.
• Own operational excellence for distributed tracing: monitoring logging alerting capacity planning and participation in an on-call rotation for the platform.
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies open source and cloud-native that materially improve the platforms scalability cost efficiency or capability.
• Shape the future of Observability AI: partner with ML/AI stakeholders to define how tracing data feeds automated anomaly detection root-cause analysis and AI-assisted incident management.
• Evangelize the platform: publish best practices mentor engineers across DPOE and partner teams and act as a technical thought leader for the modern observability/data stack internally.
• Operate with high autonomy in a fast-moving ambiguous environment setting technical direction with minimal oversight while aligning with broader platform strategy.

About You

Basic Qualification

14 years experience in software development engineering.
6 years experience specifically focused on designing building and operating complex distributed system architectures evidenced by successful deployment of systems with high availability (e.g. 99.9% uptime) and fault tolerance.
8 years experience with at least two of the following programming languages (e.g. Java Python Go) including experience in writing production-level code for distributed systems.
Bachelors degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science Engineering or a related discipline; a Masters degree (e.g. MS in Computer Science Distributed Systems or related field) is strongly preferred or equivalent practical experience.

Other Qualification

Expert-level ability in Algorithmic Thinking including insert specific advanced algorithms or data structures relevant to distributed systems to architect highly efficient and scalable solutions for complex
Deep expertise in API Development including understanding of advanced API protocols or architectural patterns
Deep understanding of Distributed Systems Software principles like distributed consensus or fault tolerance mechanisms
Proven ability to design and implement High Availability strategies for critical distributed systems
Extensive experience with Large Scale Data Processing technologies and frameworks
Deep understanding of Large Scale Systems design principles like distributed data management or scalability strategies
Strong understanding of System Security principles and best practices relevant to securing complex distributed environments
Proven ability to lead Team Collaboration within and across distributed software development teams and drive architectural direction
Strong skills in creating Technical Writing Documentation and Presentation

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 candidates 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 Workdays comprehensive benefits please click here.

Primary Location:

Primary Location Base Pay Range: $222900 USD - $334300 USD

Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $187100 USD - $334300 USD

Our Approach to Flexible Work

With Flex Work were 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 youll 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 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.