# Principal Distributed Systems Engineer at Workday

- Company: Workday
- What the company does: Experience a new way to work with Sana and agentic AI from Workday. Backed by Greylock, NEA and Menlo.
- Company website: https://www.workday.com/
- Type: Startups
- Level: Principal and up
- Location: USA, CA, Pleasanton
- Work setup: On-site
- Pay: $223K to $334K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2026-10-22
- Apply by: 2026-12-06
- Apply: https://workday.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Workday/job/USA-CA-Pleasanton/Principal-Distributed-Systems-Engineer_JR-0110621?utm_source=1752vc&utm_medium=careers
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/workday-principal-distributed-systems-engineer/

## About the role

​Own the technical vision and architecture for Workday’s data-product platform — a highly scalable lakehouse that lets teams build, govern, and operate data products and marts. This is a hands-on, high-autonomy role for an engineer who can design the platform end-to-end (modeling and dbt, orchestration, distributed query, table format, catalog, security, and infrastructure as code) and who still writes and reviews highly performant analytical SQL. Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.

## What they're looking for

- 14+ years experience in software development engineering
- 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
- Expert-level ability in algorithmic thinking to architect highly efficient and scalable solutions for high-volume data and interactive query workloads
- Deep expertise in API development, including advanced API protocols or architectural patterns around query engines, catalogs, and platform services
- Deep understanding of distributed systems principles, including partitioning, consensus or coordination, fault tolerance, and failure recovery
- Proven ability to design and implement high-availability strategies for critical distributed data systems


Source: 1752vc Careers, https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/workday-principal-distributed-systems-engineer/