Manager, Workday Platform Operations & Engineering

Service Center

CSCS TX

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Manager, Workday Platform Operations & Engineering is a critical leadership role within the Workday Center of Excellence (COE), accountable for the ongoing health, stability, and operational excellence of the Workday platform and all corporate function systems that connect to it. This leader owns the engineering foundation that keeps Workday running — governing configuration standards, driving release readiness, and ensuring that the platform delivers a reliable, performant experience for every user across the enterprise.

Leading a team that spans engineering & knowledge management, testing & release readiness, Technology service management, Workday security, and Workday reporting & PRISM analytics, this role operates at the intersection of platform governance, technical rigor, and business partnership. The Manager collaborates closely with functional COE leaders, Enterprise Architecture, and business stakeholders to translate operational requirements into platform solutions — ensuring that Workday evolves in lockstep with the organization’s strategic needs while maintaining an uncompromising standard of stability and security.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES:

Engineering & Knowledge Management

• Own Workday tenant strategy and configuration governance — establishing and enforcing standards for tenant setup, business process frameworks, security role design, domain security policies, and functional area configuration across HCM, Finance, Payroll, and connected systems.
• Lead the development and maintenance of the COE’s Workday knowledge base: configuration documentation, design decision logs, standard operating procedures (SOPs), runbooks, and architectural decisions that preserve institutional knowledge and enable team scalability.
• Establish and enforce Workday configuration best practices and change management standards, ensuring all platform changes are properly designed, peer-reviewed, documented, and version-controlled before promotion to production.
• Oversee the Workday tenant environment strategy (sandbox, implementation, production) — defining refresh cadences, environment usage policies, and data masking standards to support safe, effective development and testing.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture and Application Engineering teams to ensure Workday platform design decisions align with the organization’s broader enterprise technology strategy and security posture.
• Identify and drive platform optimization opportunities — proactively recommending Workday feature adoption, configuration improvements, and process automation that reduce manual effort and improve operational efficiency.

Platform Stability & Performance

• Accountable for Workday platform performance management — for system availability, response times, batch processing windows, integration throughput, and Prism Analytics pipeline.
• Maintain a continuous, real-time view of production health and stability – partner with Workday Technical Account Manager identifying platform degradation, anomalous behavior, and emerging risk conditions before they escalate into user-impacting incidents or SLA breaches.
• Monitor, track, and drive end-to-end resolution of Workday tenant issues — coordinating with Workday Customer Support, COE functional teams and technical teams to ensure timely, permanent, root-cause resolution.
• Maintain platform health dashboards and operational scorecards that provide real-time and trend-based visibility into SLA adherence, open incidents, environment status, and release outcomes for COE leadership and IT stakeholder audiences.
• Lead post-incident and post-release retrospectives — documenting root cause analyses, identifying systemic gaps, and driving remediation initiatives that measurably reduce recurrence and strengthen overall platform resilience.
• Collaborate closely with the Workday Technical Account Manager (TAM) — engaging regularly to review production stability and performance and create action plans for issues / risks.

Testing & Release Readiness

• Own end-to-end Workday release management, including bi-annual Workday feature release readiness: impact assessment, feature evaluation, regression testing, stakeholder communication, and production promotion sign-off.
• Own comprehensive regression testing framework across all Workday functional areas using Smart Test and supplemental test scenarios— encompassing business process testing, security testing, integration smoke testing, and end-to-end scenario validation.
• Define and govern the COE’s testing strategy: test plan creation, test case management, defect tracking, UAT coordination with functional business owners, and go/no-go governance gates for all platform changes.
• Lead testing readiness for all major platform changes, including new feature deployments, configuration changes, integration updates, tenant refreshes, and Workday Extend application releases.
• Establish and maintain automated testing capabilities within the Workday ecosystem using Kainos Smart Test — reducing manual regression burden and accelerating release velocity while maintaining quality standards.
• Communicate release schedules, testing outcomes, and go-live readiness to COE leadership, business stakeholders, and technical teams in a clear, structured format that enables confident decision-making.

Service Management & Platform Operations

• Own the Workday ITSM framework — defining and operating incident management, problem management, change management, and request fulfillment processes that ensure platform issues are resolved quickly and root causes are permanently addressed.
• Establish and maintain platform SLAs and operational KPIs (system availability, incident response time, change success rate, release quality) — publishing regular operational health reports to COE leadership and business stakeholders.
• Lead major incident response for Workday platform outages and critical defects — coordinating rapid diagnosis, resolution, and post-incident review with technical teams, Workday Support, and impacted business partners.
• Oversee the health and stability of corporate function systems connecting to Workday — ensuring the cross-functional platforms maintain reliable, governed connectivity with the Workday platform.
• Drive continuous service improvement: analyze incident and problem trends, identify systemic gaps, and lead remediation initiatives that reduce recurring failures and strengthen platform resilience.

Workday Security

• Own the Workday security architecture and administration — designing, implementing, and maintaining security groups, domain security policies, business process security policies, and segment-based security to ensure appropriate access controls across all functional areas.
• Govern the Workday security model lifecycle — conducting regular access reviews and security audits, remediating segregation-of-duties (SoD) conflicts, and ensuring compliance with internal controls, audit requirements, and data privacy standards.
• Partner with HR, Finance, Technology, and Risk / Audit stakeholders to translate business access requirements into well-governed Workday security configurations.
• Establish and maintain Workday security documentation, standards, and change management processes — ensuring all security configuration changes are peer-reviewed, properly tested, and version-controlled prior to production promotion.
• Support Workday security testing as part of the release management cycle — validating that bi-annual Workday feature releases and platform changes do not introduce unintended access changes or security regressions.

Workday Reporting & PRISM

• Own the Workday reporting and analytics strategy — governing the development, maintenance, and quality of standard reports, custom reports (advanced, matrix, composite), calculated fields, and dashboards across all functional areas of the platform.
• Lead Workday PRISM Analytics design and operations — overseeing the architecture of PRISM data sources, data change sequences, datasets, and pipelines that bring external data into the Workday analytics environment, ensuring data integrity, pipeline stability, and performance.
• Partner with HR, Finance, Payroll, and business intelligence stakeholders to translate reporting requirements into scalable, governed Workday reporting solutions — enabling data-driven decision-making while maintaining a consistent, trusted data foundation.
• Establish reporting governance standards — defining naming conventions, access controls, certification processes, and report lifecycle management to ensure consistency, accuracy, and auditability across all Workday-delivered analytics.
• Monitor PRISM pipeline health and reporting performance as part of broader platform operations — proactively identifying data latency issues, pipeline failures, and report errors, and driving timely resolution in coordination with functional and technical teams.

Team Leadership & Business Partnership

• Lead a multi-disciplinary team of Workday platform engineers, testers, and service management professionals — setting clear goals, fostering a culture of operational excellence.
• Serve as the primary operational escalation point for business stakeholders experiencing platform issues or seeking guidance on Workday capabilities — building trusted, collaborative relationships with HR, Finance, Procurement, and Technology leadership.
• Translate business needs and operational pain points into platform improvement initiatives — balancing strategic enhancement work with day-to-day operational demands through disciplined prioritization.
• Partner with functional and technical stakeholders to coordinate cross-functional platform changes, ensuring cohesive design, minimal disruption, and clear stakeholder communication.
• Represent Platform Operations in COE governance forums, steering committees, and Workday.

SKILLS & COMPETENCIES:

Technical Skills

• Workday Platform: Deep expertise in Workday tenant configuration, business process framework, security (domain, role-based, and segment-based), and functional areas.
• Release Management: Proven ability to manage Workday bi-annual releases end-to-end — impact assessment, feature evaluation, regression testing, and production promotion.
• Testing Methodology: Experience designing and executing structured test strategies including regression, UAT, smoke, and integration testing within the Workday ecosystem.
• ITSM: Hands-on experience with IT Service Management frameworks (ITIL preferred) including incident, problem, change, and request management — ideally in a Workday or enterprise SaaS context
• Workday Security & Access Governance: Demonstrated expertise in Workday security architecture, including security group design, domain and business process security policies, segment-based security, SoD conflict remediation, and access review processes aligned to audit and compliance requirements.
• Workday Reporting & PRISM Analytics: Hands-on experience building and governing Workday reports (advanced, matrix, composite), calculated fields, and dashboards; working knowledge of PRISM Analytics including data source configuration, data change sequences, and pipeline management.
• Workday Ecosystem: Familiarity with Workday Integrations, Extend, and the broader platform ecosystem as they relate to platform stability and operational dependencies
• Documentation & Governance: Strong track record of building and maintaining operational knowledge bases, runbooks, SOPs, and configuration standards

Leadership & Business Competencies

• Experience leading technical teams in a fast-paced enterprise environment.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills — able to translate technical platform issues and risks into clear, actionable language for business and executive audiences.
• Disciplined operational mindset — comfortable managing both strategic initiatives and urgent operational demands simultaneously without sacrificing quality.
• Commitment to continuous improvement actively seeks feedback, measures outcomes, and iterates on processes to raise the operational bar over time.

EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE, AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS:

• 7+ years of direct experience overseeing and administering the Workday platform, with demonstrated accountability for platform health, stability, and release management.
• 5+ years of experience leading technical teams, including performance management, career development, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Demonstrated experience managing Workday bi-annual release cycles as primary release owner, including impact assessment, regression testing governance, and stakeholder readiness.
• Proven track record implementing or managing ITSM processes (incident, problem, change management) in a Workday or enterprise SaaS operations context.
• Experience managing platform operations for systems that integrate / depend on Workday.
• Demonstrated experience designing and administering Workday security.
• Hands-on experience building and governing Workday reports and PRISM Analytics solutions.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or a related field.

CERTIFICATIONS, LICENSURES, AND LANGUAGE SKILLS (If needed):

• Workday Pro Certification in one or more functional areas such as Platform, HCM, Finance, Payroll, Security (required).
• ITIL Foundation Certification (preferred).

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:

Position requires little to moderate physical activity. Handling of average weight objects up to 15 pounds; occasional standing or walking; frequently at a keyboard, workstation, or desk.

WORK ENVIRONMENT:

Work is typically in a normal office administrative environment involving minimal exposure to physical risks. Hybrid / remote-eligible schedule available.

Caliber uses E-Verify to confirm the identity and employment eligibility of all new hires. 

Must be eligible to work in the U.S. with no restrictions.