Sr Director, Software Development Engineer - Workday Admin Central

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

Admin Central exists to fix one of Workday's biggest opportunities: turning a fragmented patchwork of tools and disconnected AI into a single, unified experience that makes every admin's day dramatically easier. We're a brand-new, fast-moving team building the future of how administration works - from a solo SMB admin to a global enterprise team - and we're just getting started. If you want to build something from scratch, move fast, and change how thousands of admins experience Workday every day, this is the team to do it with. About the Role

Admin Central is a new organization established as the single authority for the Workday Admin Strategy and the owner of the Admin Platform - transforming Workday from a fragmented "patchwork" of siloed hubs and disconnected AI agents into a unified, standardized admin experience.

We are seeking a Senior Director to build and lead this organization from the ground up, owning full accountability for its mission, roadmap, people, and delivery across all three of its pillars:

Single Admin Experience: the single, unified admin entry point that consolidates tasks, alerts, and insights into one prioritized, standardized experience. Product Adoption: shifting admins from reactive maintenance to proactive feature adoption through automated release impact analysis, testing, change impact assessment, and guided setup. Self-Optimizing Workday: automating the reactive break-fix burden — business process unblocking, security access review, and integration/reporting health — so the tenant increasingly self-heals with minimal manual intervention.

You will own the organization's full roadmap governance and TCO reduction goals, lead the consolidation of existing Admin Hubs and the Business Process Optimization (BPO) Agent Suite into Admin Core, and set the strategic standards that govern how AI agents built both inside and outside the organization are discovered and consumed by admins. You will build and scale a multi-disciplinary organization spanning engineering, product management, UX design, and data science — including standing up net-new teams and integrating resources transitioning in from Deployment Technology, Platform, RAD, and P&T Operations — while partnering closely with decentralized, matrixed capabilities (Integration Health, Tenant Management, Design + Research, and Analytics & Value Quantification) that remain owned by their respective teams. You will report into and represent Admin Core's strategy directly to senior platform and technology executives, defending roadmap priorities with quantified impact and ensuring the organization scales consistently from SMB to Global Enterprise customers.

Responsibilities - Own the full P&L-style leadership of Admin Core, setting strategic direction and holding accountability for delivery across all three pillars against committed FY27R1 and beyond milestones. - Build, hire, partner, and scale a multi-disciplinary organization — engineering, product management, UX design, and data science — including standing up new teams and transitioning from consolidated products and partner orgs. - Govern the platform-wide roadmap and prioritization model, ensuring enhancements are no longer developed in silos and TCO reduction goals are met across every product area. - Define and mandate the UI/UX and technical integration standards that allow domain-led teams to plug into the unified Admin Experience Layer. - Set the strategy and governance model for Admin Central AI agent ecosystem, ensuring consistent discovery, interaction, and consumption models across agents built both inside and outside the organization. - Build and maintain matrixed partnerships with decentralized capability owners to ensure their capabilities surface seamlessly within the unified experience without requiring direct ownership. - Represent Admin Central to executive and cross-functional stakeholders, defending roadmap decisions and resourcing asks with quantified TCO, adoption, and ROI impact. - Own organizational scalability and resilience as headcount, capability scope, and the underlying customer base grow.

About You

Basic Qualifications

- 18+ years of experience in technology organizations, including 8+ years in senior people-leadership roles building and scaling multi-disciplinary engineering, product, and design organizations. - Proven experience leading complex, multi-domain enterprise SaaS platforms end-to-end, including translating fragmented, siloed strategies into a single, unified organizational roadmap. - Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, or a related discipline; MBA or Master's degree preferred, or equivalent practical experience.

Other Qualifications

- Mastery in Organizational Design & Scaling, including standing up net-new teams, integrating consolidated products and transitioning resources, and structuring multi-pillar organizations for speed and clarity of ownership. - Deep expertise in Executive Stakeholder Management, including securing headcount and resourcing commitments from peer executives, and defending roadmap priorities at the senior leadership level. - Expert understanding of Platform & AI Agent Ecosystem Strategy, including governance models for agent discovery, consumption, and standardization across an organization's own agents and those built by partner teams. - Deep mastery of Cross-Functional People Leadership, including direct management of Engineering Managers, Principal Product Managers, and Design/Data Science leads, and fostering alignment across matrixed, decentralized partner teams. - Proven ability to drive Value Quantification & Data-Driven Governance, building ROI/TCO measurement frameworks that justify roadmap prioritization and resourcing decisions to the broader business. - Extensive experience in Platform Integration & Experience Standards, setting UI/UX and technical integration mandates that a wide range of domain-led teams reliably adopt. - Strategic Communication & Technical Writing, authoring organizational strategy papers, roadmap governance frameworks, and executive-level proposals that set standards adopted across an entire platform organization.

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: €168,000 EUR - €252,000 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.

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