Staff Workday Integration Engineer, Tech Foundations at Airbnb

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.

About the Team

The Talent Systems team within BizTech is the trusted technology partner to Employee Experience, Recruiting, Payroll, Procurement, Legal, and Privacy teams across Airbnb’s global operations. Driven by the philosophy of “High Tech, Human Touch,” we design and implement technology that meets both business objectives and employee needs: building robust frameworks that support the full employee journey, delivering AI-enabled self-service tools, and playing a key role in payroll management and benefits enrollment.

We own and operate a portfolio of 300+ production integrations and custom applications spanning payroll processors, benefits carriers, identity providers, compliance vendors, and internal platforms, with Workday at the center. We are also building the agentic layer on top of that portfolio: an Airbnb-owned Workday MCP server and AI assistant plugins that let employees and managers act on HR data directly from the tools they already use. You will partner closely with our Systems Architect, HR Centers of Excellence, IT Security, Finance, and external vendors to deliver enterprise-grade integrations and AI-enabled tooling that power Airbnb’s global HR technology ecosystem.

The Difference You Will Make

As a Staff Workday Integration Engineer, you are the technical authority for the integration initiatives that BizTech and Airbnb depend on. You will define our integration strategy and technical roadmap, set the architectural standards other engineers build against, and own the engineering of the Workday MCP and agentic integrations that are reshaping how employees interact with HR processes.

This is a hands-on builder role. You will personally write integration logic, own production reliability, and make the architectural decisions that keep HR data flowing correctly across our global employee population. You will drive touchless automation, reduce manual intervention, and ensure compliance across multiple jurisdictions. Your work directly impacts how thousands of Airbnb employees experience their payroll, benefits, time tracking, and HR processes.

You work alongside a Systems Architect who owns Talent Systems business process architecture, functional design, and the capability roadmap. You need enough functional fluency to build integrations and AI tools that are correct, and the engineering depth to make them reliable. As a Staff-level engineer, you will think 12+ months ahead, proactively surface systemic gaps, mentor the engineers around you, and establish patterns adopted across the Talent Systems team.

What You’ll Own

Integration Architecture & Technical Strategy

• Define and own Airbnb’s Workday integration architecture standards, patterns, and governance frameworks
• Lead architectural decisions for complex, high-risk integration initiatives, including global rollouts, payroll runs, benefits open enrollment, and system migrations
• Evaluate and advise on build-vs-buy decisions, Workday-native-vs-middleware trade-offs, and long-term integration platform strategy
• Establish reusable integration design patterns, error handling and retry frameworks, and observability standards adopted team-wide
• Anticipate platform evolution and architect integrations that accommodate Workday’s semi-annual releases with minimal rework
• Identify and remediate technical debt across the integration landscape: functionality, performance, error handling, and scalability

Core Workday Integration Development

• Architect, design, build, and maintain complex inbound and outbound integrations using Workday Studio, Core Connectors, EIBs, Document Transforms, and RaaS API endpoints
• Develop integrations against Workday Web Services (WWS): WSDL interpretation, web service versioning, request/response handling for SOAP and REST
• Own design and delivery of high-volume integration scenarios: payroll runs, benefits open enrollment, global workforce changes, and multi-country rollouts
• Own Workday payroll interfaces (PECI, PICOF) and their interaction with third-party payroll providers
• Build and maintain advanced Custom Reports and Calculated Fields for integration and AI-tool consumption
• Work within the Business Process Framework, understanding how process events trigger integration flows
• Build and maintain Workday Extend applications (data models, business logic, UI pages, Extend REST APIs) when Extend is the right tool versus Studio, EIB, or middleware; Extend adoption strategy and SME ownership sit with the Systems Architect
• Apply Workday Orchestrate for multi-system workflow coordination where it fits
• Manage the integration portfolio across Workday’s semi-annual release cycle: assess release notes, lead sandbox testing, deploy to production with rigorous change controls

AI & Agentic Integration

• Own the engineering of Airbnb’s Workday MCP server and its tool surface: tool design, per-user OAuth 2.0 authorization, human-in-the-loop gates on write actions, idempotent write contracts, rate and volume guardrails, and audit logging
• Design and build agentic integrations that let AI assistant plugins and other enterprise LLM tooling read from and act on Workday safely, with permissions resolved as the authenticated user and no shared service-account fallback for user-attributable actions
• Co-own the Talent Systems AI architecture and governance framework with the Systems Architect: how agentic tools, Workday-native AI, and enterprise LLM capabilities interconnect, and the guardrails that govern their adoption
• Evaluate Workday-native agentic capabilities (Agent Ready Tools, MCP Explorer, Workday Agents) and emerging HR AI platforms; provide structured build-vs-buy-vs-configure analysis
• Translate business use cases into AI tool architectures that are operationally feasible, permission-safe, and measurable
• Instrument AI tooling for usage and cost (per-tool call metrics) to inform Workday platform entitlement and licensing decisions

Production Reliability, Security & Platform Governance

• Drive operational excellence across the integration portfolio: SLAs, prioritization, and escalation handling
• Own SLAs for the most critical integrations and AI tools; establish monitoring, alerting, reconciliation, and runbook standards that raise the bar across the team
• Drive root cause analysis on integration failures and implement preventative controls
• Own security, compliance, and governance from the integration and engineering perspective: PII handling, audit controls, and data reconciliation strategies that meet GDPR, SOC 2, SOX, and applicable data privacy requirements for HR data flows
• Enforce authentication and transport security across all integration surfaces: OAuth 2.0 (including user-context flows), SAML, and secure file transfer (PGP, SFTP)
• Assess system impacts and risks when introducing new integrations, AI tools, or platform changes, and communicate them clearly before promotion to production
• Own tenant deployment strategy: sandbox-to-production promotion, Git-based version control of integration and Extend artifacts, CI-friendly testing, and rollback planning

HR Technology & Functional Fluency

• Maintain a strong working understanding of core HR and payroll processes (hire-to-retire, compensation cycles, benefits enrollment, time and absence, compliance reporting) sufficient to design integrations and AI tools that reflect real business requirements
• Understand how HR data flows across the enterprise: from Workday as the system of record through downstream payroll processors, benefits carriers, identity providers, and compliance platforms
• Proactively surface configuration and upstream data issues that affect integration reliability, and partner with the Systems Architect and functional owners to resolve them
• Bring an employee-centric lens to integration and AI tool design so the technology we build translates to seamless experiences for the people it serves

Technical Leadership & Cross-Functional Influence

• Act as the technical authority for Workday integrations and HR agentic tooling across BizTech; influence architectural decisions in adjacent teams including Enterprise Integrations, Identity, Data Platform, and AI Products
• Mentor and upskill senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, code reviews, pair development, and documented standards
• Partner with Employee Experience, Recruiting, Payroll, Total Rewards, Legal/Privacy, IT Security, and enterprise architecture to translate ambiguous requirements into sound technical architectures; communicate constraints, trade-offs, and risks at all levels
• Write authoritative Integration Design Documents, MCP tool specifications, and operational runbooks maintainable by the broader team
• Proactively identify systemic risks and portfolio health issues; drive resolution and communicate transparently with leadership
• Represent Talent Systems in enterprise architecture forums, AI tooling quality reviews, and vendor technical discussions; maintain active knowledge of the Workday roadmap and HR technology trends

Your Expertise

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience)
• 9+ years of experience in enterprise technology, software development, or systems integration, with at least 5–6 years of hands-on Workday integration development covering the full lifecycle: requirements, design, build, testing, go-live, and post-production support
• Workday Integration Proficiency (personally written code required):
• Workday Studio: complex multi-step integrations, sub-integrations, custom error handling and fault frameworks, XSLT transformations
• Core Connectors and EIBs: worker data, business process events, payroll and benefits outbound connectors; clear judgment on EIB use cases and limitations versus Studio; Document Transform payload mapping
• Payroll interfaces: PECI and PICOF, and their interaction with third-party payroll providers
• RaaS (Report-as-a-Service): advanced report design, calculated fields, and API endpoint exposure
• Workday Web Services (WWS): WSDL reading, SOAP/REST calls, versioning, and error response handling
• Workday-Native & Functional Fluency:
• Expert proficiency in XSLT, XML, and JSON; comfortable with Java sufficient for Workday Studio custom steps
• Working knowledge of the Business Process Framework and how events trigger integration flows
• Familiarity with Workday functional configuration across HCM, Benefits, Payroll, Security, and Time & Absence, sufficient to independently diagnose upstream data and process issues (deep functional configuration expertise is not required)
• Foundational understanding of HR and payroll processes and how they generate the data that integrations carry
• Modern Engineering & AI:
• REST API design and OAuth 2.0, including user-context (authorization code) flows and token lifecycle handling
• Experience building or integrating LLM-based tools, AI agents, or MCP servers with enterprise business systems, including permission-safe access patterns and human-in-the-loop controls
• Experience integrating Workday with middleware or iPaaS platforms (MuleSoft, Boomi, Workato) and the judgment to know when middleware fits versus Workday-native integration
• Git-based version control and structured deployment and change management practices
• Security, Compliance & Engineering Practices:
• Strong knowledge of data security for HR data: OAuth 2.0, SAML, secure file transfer (PGP, SFTP), PII handling, and audit requirements
• Proven experience managing integrations across Workday’s semi-annual release cycle, including impact assessment and sandbox testing
• Demonstrated record as a technical leader who has shaped architecture decisions and raised engineering quality across a team
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; able to write clear design documents and runbooks, and present technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to operate effectively in unstructured, fast-moving environments and drive toward outcomes under ambiguity
• Experience working in an Agile/Scrum environment

Preferred

• Workday Pro Certification in Integrations (highly valued)
• Hands-on experience with Workday Extend (data models, UI pages, Extend REST APIs, orchestrations); accelerates ramp into Extend build work
• Workday Pro Certification in Extend
• Hands-on experience with Workday Orchestrate
• Proficiency in TypeScript/Node and Python for services, tooling, and test harnesses outside the Workday tenant
• Familiarity with Workday’s native agentic capabilities (Agent Ready Tools, MCP Explorer, Workday Agents) and their trade-offs versus custom MCP tooling
• Experience shipping LLM plugins or agents to an enterprise employee population, including evaluation and quality review
• Experience supporting global, multi-country HR technology environments
• Knowledge of GDPR, India DPDP, SOC 2, or SOX requirements in the context of HR data flows
• SQL and data-warehouse fluency for reconciliation, analytics, and People Analytics partnership

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is co

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