Workday HRIS Specialist

Location: Texas | Type: 6 Month Contract (Remote)

About the role

The Workday HRIS Specialist supports, optimizes, and expands the use of Workday to enable efficient, scalable HR, Payroll, Benefits, Compensation, and Workforce Planning. This role serves as a functional subject matter expert across the Workday ecosystem, with responsibility for configuration, implementation support, reporting, governance, data integrity, and continuous improvement. The ideal candidate brings hands-on experience across Workday Payroll, Benefits, Time Tracking, Scheduling, Adaptive Planning, and Advanced Compensation, with a strong understanding of how Workday HCM connects with Adaptive Planning.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain Workday reports, dashboards, scorecards, and calculated fields. Deliver actionable workforce, payroll, benefits, compensation, and planning insights to business leaders.
• Support regular and ad hoc reporting requests while ensuring data accuracy and consistency.
• Build strong partnerships with HR, Payroll, Benefits, Compensation, Talent, and Finance teams. Act as a trusted advisor on Workday functionality and best practices.
• Support change management efforts and provide guidance to business users on new processes and system capabilities.
• Lead the implementation, administration, and ongoing optimization of Adaptive Planning. Serve as a technical liaison between HR and Finance to support workforce planning, budgeting, headcount forecast and costs, reporting, and ongoing optimization planning activities.
• Ensure accurate data flow and alignment between Workday and Adaptive Planning. Support annual operating plans and executive workforce reporting.
• Establish, maintain, and continuously improve Workday Time Tracking and Scheduling configurations to support accurate time capture, labor allocation, schedule management, and compliance with applicable pay practices.
• Serve as the technical subject matter expert for the end-to-end flow of time, attendance, scheduling, and payroll data within Workday and across payroll processing activities.
• Design, configure, test, and troubleshoot time calculations, pay rules, eligibility logic, integrations, validations, and exception handling to ensure accurate and timely payroll outcomes.
• Partner closely with Payroll, HR, Operations & Maintenance, and Finance stakeholders to diagnose issues, improve controls, streamline processes, and support scalable solutions for complex scheduling and payroll requirements.
• Serve as SME for key Workday modules, including Payroll, Benefits, Time Tracking, Scheduling, Advanced Compensation, and Adaptive Planning, while still providing support to all other Workday modules and functionalities.
• Configure and maintain Workday business processes, eligibility rules, compensation structures, security roles, validations, and organizational frameworks.
• Identify opportunities to streamline and improve HR, Payroll, Benefits, Compensation, and Planning processes through Workday functionality.
• Maintain system integrity through ongoing audits, testing, and data validation activities.
• Participate in Workday implementation and enhancement projects (such as Annual Enrollment and Advanced Compensation) from requirements gathering and solution design through testing and deployment.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to evaluate business needs and recommend scalable Workday solutions.
• Support Workday releases, feature adoption, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Develop and maintain process documentation, testing scripts, and training materials.

Requirements

• 7+ years of progressive HRIS experience supporting Workday.
• Hands-on experience with Workday Payroll, Benefits Administration, Adaptive Planning, Time Tracking, Scheduling, and Advanced Compensation.
• Experience supporting Workday projects, including participation in early implementation phases such as discovery, process design, configuration, testing, and deployment.
• Strong understanding of HR, Payroll, Benefits, Compensation, and workforce planning business processes.
• Experience creating Workday reports, calculated fields, and business process configurations.
• Ability to independently manage priorities and drive solutions with minimal oversight.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business, Information Systems, Finance, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Workday Pro or Workday certification(s) in relevant modules (preferred).
• Experience in organizations with complex payroll, scheduling, or multi-location operations (preferred).
• Knowledge of Workday security, EIBs, and integration concepts (preferred).
• Experience partnering with Finance teams utilizing Adaptive Planning (preferred).