Principal, Data Scientist

Workday Workday · Enterprise · IND.Chennai

This Principal Data Scientist role at Workday focuses on building and deploying AI/ML models to analyze customer usage data, optimize deployment processes, and drive product development for Workday's AI platform. The role involves defining data science strategy, architecting ML solutions, influencing product roadmaps, and working with cross-functional teams to improve customer onboarding, adoption, and overall business growth within a large-scale SaaS environment.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead the data science strategy for global deployment and adoption initiatives, driving faster, safer, and more predictable customer onboarding
  2. Architect and deliver advanced analytical, statistical, and machine learning solutions that optimize data migration, configuration validation, risk detection, and adoption outcomes across customer environments
  3. Partner with global stakeholders - including product, engineering, customer success, and implementation teams - to embed data-driven decisioning directly into deployment tooling and workflows
  4. Define success metrics and experimentation frameworks, establishing the leading indicators for customer adoption, time-to-value, and deployment quality across regions and industries
  5. Influence product roadmaps by translating complex data insights into actionable strategic recommendations for senior leadership and stakeholders

Skills

Required

  • data science
  • software engineering
  • data platform architecture
  • large-scale, multi-tenant SaaS environments
  • distributed systems
  • enterprise platforms
  • data-driven platforms
  • high-throughput data ingestion and processing systems
  • concurrency, latency, and cost efficiency
  • Python
  • data pipelines
  • modeling
  • experimentation
  • production ML systems
  • globally distributed team collaboration
  • ambiguity navigation
  • technical direction setting
  • big data
  • distributed query technologies
  • Apache Spark
  • Hive
  • AI/ML techniques
  • observability
  • operational data
  • anomaly detection
  • root cause analysis
  • predictive alerting
  • system behavior modeling

Nice to have

  • customer success
  • implementation teams
  • customer onboarding
  • data migration
  • configuration validation
  • risk detection
  • adoption outcomes

What the JD emphasized

  • 12+ years of experience spanning data science, software engineering, and data platform architecture in large-scale, multi-tenant SaaS environments, with a strong foundation in distributed systems and enterprise platforms.
  • Proven track record of architecting, implementing, and operating data-driven platforms across multiple (3–4+) enterprise products
  • Hands-on expertise in building and scaling high-throughput data ingestion and processing systems, with demonstrated ability to solve for concurrency, latency, and cost efficiency.
  • Strong proficiency in at least one core programming language (Python preferred), used for data pipelines, modeling, experimentation, and production ML systems.
  • Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in a globally distributed team, collaborating across time zones and cultures with product, engineering, and customer-facing stakeholders.
  • Comfortable navigating high ambiguity, exercising autonomy, and setting technical direction in fast-moving, enterprise environments.
  • Hands-on experience applying AI/ML techniques to observability and operational data, including anomaly detection, root cause analysis, predictive alerting, and system behavior modeling.

Other signals

  • AI platform for managing people, money, and agents
  • define and build models to analyze customer usage and other data
  • provide insights that enable data-driven product development and decision making
  • uncover insights, identify opportunities for product improvements and new product development
  • define product metrics with goals, and design experiments that drive adoption and engagement
  • execute key data science initiatives and drive the requirements to identify, explore, evaluate, and analyze new data sets for key insights to continuously improve adoption
  • architect and deliver advanced analytical, statistical, and machine learning solutions that optimize data migration, configuration validation, risk detection, and adoption outcomes across customer environments
  • Define success metrics and experimentation frameworks, establishing the leading indicators for customer adoption, time-to-value, and deployment quality across regions and industries
  • Influence product roadmaps by translating complex data insights into actionable strategic recommendations for senior leadership and stakeholders
  • Hands-on experience applying AI/ML techniques to observability and operational data, including anomaly detection, root cause analysis, predictive alerting, and system behavior modeling.