Workday Functional Architect

About the role

The Workday Functional Architect serves as the internal expert across the entire Workday HCM platform, spanning all functional domains we operate. This role is crucial for ensuring coherence, best practice adherence, and strategic alignment across every workstream and every PortCo we serve.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the highest-level internal Workday authority across Core HCM, Compensation, AdvancedCompensation, Recruiting, Talent, Learning, Benefits, US Payroll, Onboarding, People Analytics, Workday Help, and Peakon.
• Lead solution design for complex, cross-module, and enterprise-wide requirements that span multiple PortCos, geographies, or functional domains.
• Define and govern configuration standards, design patterns, naming conventions, and architectural guardrails across the Workday tenant.
• Evaluate trade-offs between configuration, custom reporting, and integration approaches—making and documenting architectural decisions with clear rationale.
• Provide expert guidance on Workday's evolving product roadmap and assess the impact of bi-annual releases on the tenant architecture.
• Identify technical debt, consolidation opportunities, and areas where legacy design decisions need to be revisited or retired.
• Act as the primary escalation resource for Product Owners when requirements exceed module-level complexity or require cross-domain coordination.
• Partner with HR leaders, Finance, Legal, and Compliance teams to translate business requirements into Workday architecture that is both technically sound and strategically aligned.
• Lead discovery and design workshops with PortCo stakeholders for high-complexity initiatives, new product rollouts, or structural changes.
• Closely partner with IT team to oversee integration architecture between Workday and third-party systems including but not limited to payroll providers, benefits carriers, and analytics platforms.
• Ensure data governance principles are embedded into platform design, with attention to data lineage, tenant configuration, and reporting structures.
• Partner with IT/Infrastructure to ensure security, SSO, provisioning, and audit requirements are addressed within the platform design.
• Establish and maintain a Workday Centre of Excellence (CoE) framework—including design review processes, change management standards, and release governance.
• Own the architectural decision log, design documentation, and configuration standards library.
• Conduct periodic platform audits to identify configuration drift, unused functionality, or compliance gaps.
• Champion Workday best practices and ensure the team remains current with Workday Community, certification updates, and product innovations.
• Support hiring, onboarding, and skills development across the Workday functional team.
• Represent the People Technology function in enterprise architecture forums, vendor discussions, and executive briefings.

Requirements

• 10+ years of Workday functional experience, with deep hands-on expertise across a minimum of five Workday modules.
• Demonstrated experience as a lead architect or senior consultant on complex, multi-entity or global Workday implementations.
• Strong command of Workday business process framework, security model, reporting and calculated fields.
• Proven experience solutioning across Core HCM, Compensation, Recruiting, Payroll, and at least two additional modules.
• Experience with Workday integration technologies.
• Exceptional ability to translate ambiguous, complex business requirements into clear, scalable Workday solutions.
• Experience operating in a federated, multi-entity, or shared-services model—ideally across a portfolio of companies.
• Strong executive communication skills—able to present architectural recommendations clearly to non-technical audiences.
• Workday Pro certification(s) in one or more modules preferred but not necessary.
• Prior experience in consulting and Workday partner ecosystem is a plus.
• Preferred experience in real estate, financial services, or private equity-backed portfolio environments.
• Exposure to Peakon, HiredScore, Paradox, or other Workday-adjacent HR technology products.
• Experience supporting or leading Workday Annual Releases and Feature Opt-In evaluations.
• Background in HR technology strategy—able to evaluate build vs. buy, best-of-breed vs. platform decisions.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration, or a related field.
• Experience: Minimum of 10 years of relevant Workday experience.

Skills

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite.
• Experience with Workday API and scripting languages (e.g., Python, Java).

Benefits

The Company provides a variety of benefits to employees, including health insurance coverage, retirement savings plan, paid holidays and paid time off (PTO), and a competitive salary range of $125,000.00 to $175,000.00 annually. Additional benefits include productivity hours, summer Fridays, work-from-anywhere month, in-house and external learning & development opportunities, and generous health insurance and wellness benefits.