About this role
About the Role We are seeking a Principal-level API Architect in Product Engineering to lead our API strategy for agentic and integration-heavy scenarios. You will own the API architecture vision for Product Engineering, set standards (OpenAPI, patterns, error models, observability), and partner with engineering leaders to make them real. This role will serve as the Chief API Architect for Product Engineering, shaping standards that enable scalable, reliable APIs for internal teams and AI agents. What You'll Do
- Define the API architecture and governance model for Product Engineering, spanning REST, GraphQL, SOAP, and emerging integration models used by Workday agents and products.
- Establish and maintain API standards: OpenAPI contract guidelines, review and approval process; resource modeling, naming and pagination conventions; authentication/authorization and multi-tenant patterns; error handling, retry semantics, and idempotency guidelines; versioning and deprecation policies.
- Partner with Product Engineering leaders and 'API champions' in each product area to shape their roadmaps, identify gaps, and drive convergence on shared patterns and building blocks.
- Define reference architectures and patterns for Agent-ready APIs and orchestration patterns used by the Agent Factory; data-centric APIs including safe exposure of data via Data Cloud / SQL projections; latency and observability standards across the end-to-end request path.
- Lead critical cross-team API design reviews and act as the tie-breaker on contentious or high-impact design decisions.
- Work closely with platform partners (Gateways, Trident, Web Service Frameworks, Core Services, Data Cloud, AI/Agent Factory) to ensure Product Engineering’s needs are represented and platform capabilities are consistently applied.
- Shape and help run a single, transparent intake and prioritization process for key Product Engineering API investments.
- Evaluate build/borrow/buy options for tools that help Product Engineering design, test, and operate APIs (including contract testing, catalogs, MCP/Data Cloud connectors, and developer tooling).
- Mentor senior engineers and managers on API architecture, distributed systems, and integration best practices; build communities of practice across Product Engineering.
- Communicate the API vision and status to senior stakeholders and help influence product and resourcing decisions. What We're Looking For
- 12+ years of experience building large-scale, mission-critical backend systems and APIs.
- 5+ years in a senior architecture, engineering or staff-plus role with responsibility for cross-team or organization-wide API/platform architecture.
- 5+ years of hands-on experience using TypeScript or Python to build web services and APIs (Ex: REST, SOAP, GraphQL, JSON, XML, WSDL, Swagger/OpenAPI).
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline or equivalent practical experience.
- Understanding of the MCP protocol specification and architecture.
- Proven track record of setting and driving technical standards that scale across multiple teams.
- Able to prototype reference implementations and dive into code reviews when needed.
- Experience leveraging AI-assisted code generation and review tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) to improve development speed and quality.
- Strong expertise in distributed systems and cloud architectures, including high-throughput, low-latency services.