Principal Partner AI Architect
Workday · Remote · United States · 29d ago
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 Partner AI Experience team is Workday’s dedicated investment in accelerating our most strategic GSI and Ecosystem partnerships. Working alongside the Global Partner Organization (GPO), this team serves as the technical, functional, and quantitative experts, providing the enablement infrastructure, product intelligence, and go-to-market support that allows our partners to build and sell Workday AI with confidence and speed.Each pod is aligned to a single strategic GSI or Ecosystem Motion and staffed with specialists across the oCIO, oCHRO, and oCFO domains, along with a dedicated Business Value Architect. The pod works across the partner’s solution consulting teams, architects, offering leaders, and value desks to ensure the partner’s Workday practice is equipped, differentiated, and positioned to grow.
About the Role
As a Partner AI Architect (oCIO) at the Principal or Senior Partner Enterprise Architect level, you are the technical authority within your pod for Workday’s AI platform, integration architecture, and agentic capabilities. Your focus is ensuring the partner’s most technical teams — architects, CTOs, and offering developers — have the depth of understanding they need to design, position, and build on Workday’s platform with confidence, well before their customers ask the questions.
Your work shapes how the partner’s technical practice thinks about and builds on Workday, so that when platform and agentic decisions are being made at clients, Workday is already the assumed foundation. You will translate complex Workday architecture into clear, credible narratives for CTO-level audiences, design reference architectures the partner can own, and ensure the partner’s demo environments reflect the full, integrated power of Workday’s platform. You will coordinate closely with the Forward Deployed Partner Architect aligned to your GSI, who engages directly on the partner’s largest Workday deals.
This role aligns to the Principal Enterprise Architect job skills and core skills, emphasizing enterprise architecture leadership, strategic influence, deep technical expertise, and cross-organizational collaboration.
Key Responsibilities
Technical Practice Readiness
Serve as the primary technical authority for Workday’s AI platform, integration architecture (A2A, MCP), agentic capabilities, and Data Cloud within your pod.
Ensure the partner’s architects and technical teams have deep, current knowledge of Workday’s platform and roadmap well ahead of general availability, so they confidently lead platform conversations before Workday is in the room.
Design and deliver architect-tier sessions and technical deep-dives that build genuine fluency within the partner’s elite technical teams, not just surface-level awareness.
Maintain authoritative knowledge of Workday’s technical roadmap and translate upcoming releases into clear implications for the partner’s architecture patterns, delivery standards, and solution portfolio.
Architecture & Platform Strategy
Architect reference solutions that articulate how Workday’s unified platform — spanning HCM, Finance, and agentic AI — fits into a client’s broader technology and AI strategy, giving the partner a credible, repeatable story for how Workday anchors the enterprise ecosystem.
Define agent orchestration and governance patterns that leverage Workday’s security framework, data model, and agent system of record to deliver enterprise-grade AI, enabling partners to speak confidently to governance, compliance, and risk.
Design cross-platform agent integration patterns that show how Workday agents connect and collaborate within a client’s broader AI ecosystem, including integration best practices across MCP and A2A that position Workday as the trusted data foundation.
Help the partner identify architectural patterns that create durable, partner-owned IP — ensuring offerings are designed to scale and be reused, rather than remain one-off implementations.
Competitive & Platform Positioning
Equip the partner’s technical teams with sharp, current competitive positioning, clearly articulating how Workday’s native architecture and connected data model compares to competitors and generic AI builds stitched together via APIs.
Translate Workday’s technical differentiation into language that resonates with CTOs, chief architects, and senior technology leaders — focusing on architectural implications, risk posture, and long-term platform consequences rather than features alone.
Bring partner-developed architectural patterns and technical innovations back to Workday’s Forward Deployed and field teams, ensuring those insights strengthen Workday’s broader technical positioning and sales motions.
Serve as a first line of defense for the partner’s technical teams — fielding architectural objections, platform questions, and complex technical issues encountered with clients, and ensuring the partner has the depth and positioning to move forward with confidence.
Represent Workday alongside the partner at joint industry events, technical forums, and architecture conferences — co-presenting on platform strategy and agentic AI to strengthen the partner’s technical credibility and Workday’s presence in key conversations.
Demo & Technical Readiness
Partner with the Solution Architecture team to shape demo environment data, functional flows, and provisioning, ensuring the partner’s demo experience reflects the full integration of Workday-delivered product with GSI-delivered solutions, credibly end-to-end.
Bring partner-built solutions and architectural assets back to the Solution Architecture team so Workday’s field teams can demo partner-delivered solutions seamlessly — closing the loop between what the partner builds and what Workday can show.
Build and maintain code accelerators, integration playbooks, and technical reference materials the partner’s teams can deploy at scale across their global practice.
Coordinate with the Forward Deployed Partner Architect on the partner’s largest deals, ensuring architectural standards and patterns defined at the practice level translate directly into deal-level technical confidence.
About You
Basic Qualifications
Principal Partner Enterprise Architect
7+ years of enterprise software solution consulting, architecture, or hands-on experience supporting enterprise software applications at Workday or a comparable enterprise software company.
5+ years of applied knowledge of cloud architecture, security, reporting, and integration standards, including API-based and native integration patterns.
5+ years of Workday experience
Experience working with or within Global System Integrators, large SIs, or strategic technology partners — either from the vendor side or from within a GSI or consulting practice.
Demonstrated domain expertise in oCIO-relevant capabilities such as platform architecture, AI/ML integration, agentic frameworks, or enterprise technology strategy.
Senior Partner Enterprise Architect
5+ years of enterprise software solution consulting, architecture, or hands-on experience supporting enterprise software applications at Workday or a comparable enterprise software company.
3+ years of applied knowledge of cloud architecture, security, reporting, and integration standards, including API-based and native integration patterns.
3+ years of Workday experience
Experience working with or within Global System Integrators, large SIs, or strategic technology partners — either from the vendor side or from within a GSI or consulting practice.
Demonstrated domain expertise in oCIO-relevant capabilities such as platform architecture, AI/ML integration, agentic frameworks, or enterprise technology strategy.
Other Qualifications
Proven ability to engage credibly with GSI CTOs, chief architects, and offering development leads as a technical peer and trusted advisor, grounded in deep platform knowledge and/or prior consulting or implementation experience.
Strong command of Workday’s technical architecture and AI platform — including Sana, Data Cloud, and integration frameworks — or equivalent experience with a clear track record of ramping quickly on new platforms; deep Workday knowledge is highly valued.
Experience designing and delivering reference architectures, technical playbooks, or integration standards that are adopted at scale within a partner or enterprise organization.
Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, outcome-oriented narratives for both technical and executive audiences, with strong written and verbal communication skills.
AI evangelist mindset: a visceral curiosity for agents, LLMs, RAG, and MCP, with a practical understanding of how to architect and operationalize agentic AI in the enterprise.
Natural feedback loop orientation — you proactively surface what you are seeing in partner practices (architectural challenges, emerging patterns, competitive signals) back to Workday’s Product & Technology teams so the platform continues to reflect real partner and customer needs.
Highly collaborative working style with demonstrated ability to coordinate across GPO, Product & Technology, Forward Deployed, Solution Consulting, and other cross-functional teams.
Energized by a fast-moving, investment-stage environment, comfortable operating where standards are being written, not just followed, with a strong bias toward learning, iteration, and continuous improvement.
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.PleasantonPrimary Location Base Pay Range: $138,600 USD - $208,000 USDAdditional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $162,200 USD - $243,200 USDAdditional Considerations:
If performed in Colorado, the pay range for this job is $162,200 USD - $243,200 USD based on min and max pay range for that role if performed in CO.The application deadline for this role is the same as the posting end date stated as below:
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.
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