About the Role

This role is for someone who has fundamentally changed how they work because of AI: do you use LLMs, automation platforms, and AI agents daily to research faster, design better, and document without friction? This role might be for you.

You'll bring deep Workday HCM expertise and an AI-native mindset to a role that sits at the center of our people systems ecosystem - touching global growth, M&A activity, and continuous process improvement. The Lead Analyst, People Technology owns the configuration foundation that every other module, integration, and downstream system depends on. You'll proactively identify automation opportunities, design and ship AI-powered workflows, and raise the technical bar for everyone around you.

What You'll Do:

AI & Automation

• Identify and own a continuous pipeline of AI and automation use cases across the HR tech stack; from intelligent data validation to LLM-assisted document generation, classification, and employee-facing tooling.
• Design and deploy AI-powered workflows using tools like Workato AI agents, Claude APIs, and equivalent orchestration platforms, not as one-off experiments, but as production-grade automations with monitoring and documentation.
• Use AI in your own daily workflow to research configuration options, generate documentation drafts, synthesise stakeholder feedback, and prototype solutions - this is a baseline expectation, not a differentiator.
• Partner with IT and integration owners to identify where agentic or LLM-driven automation can replace manual data handling, approval routing, and reporting workflows.
• Package what you build into shareable, easy-to-adopt assets so the team can pick them up and run with them.

Core HCM Ownership

• Serve as the People Technology SME for Core HCM in Workday and our broader tech stack, owning configuration across the employee lifecycle.
• Design, configure, and maintain complex, scalable solutions focused on automation and elevating the employee experience. Leverage a systems-thinking approach that anticipates how today's decisions shape tomorrow's flexibility and downstream integrity.
• Apply a downstream-impact mindset to every configuration decision anticipating and communicating how Core HCM changes affect Compensation, Benefits, Payroll, Recruiting, Talent, and other integrations.
• Own data quality and system integrity, proactively identifying and resolving issues before they create downstream risk.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Act as a strategic advisor to stakeholders across Operations, Global Expansion, IT, FP&A, and other teams, bringing Workday best practice expertise to the table, proactively identifying gaps, and driving the roadmap forward rather than waiting for requests to come in.
• Translate ambiguous business needs into clear technical requirements, partnering closely with HR, HR Operations, Global Expansion, Finance, Legal, IT, and other teams.
• Partner with integration owners and technical teams to triage and troubleshoot integration issues; understand Workday integration types (EIBs, Core Connectors, Studio, Orchestrate, APIs) well enough to independently diagnose problems and escalate with clear, actionable context.

Projects & Delivery

• Lead and execute M&A integrations and new entity builds end-to-end including due diligence support, data migration via EIBs, Day 1 readiness, and post-close harmonization, ensuring a clean foundation for all downstream modules from day one.
• Lead end-to-end process design efforts by mapping current state, identifying gaps, and re-engineering operations before automating, creating clear process documentation that serves as the foundation for scalable solutions.
• Lead complex, cross-functional technology projects in the People Technology space from requirements gathering through testing and deployment.
• Design and implement AI-powered automations to streamline HR processes, leveraging tools like Workato AI agents and Claude LLMs while proactively identifying high-value use cases within the Workday ecosystem.

Mentorship & Knowledge Sharing

• Mentor team members and stakeholders on system configuration, data models, and best practices; actively raise the collective technical skill floor and contribute to hiring decisions. Champion adoption of new tools and technologies.

What You'll Bring

• 8+ years of hands-on Workday HCM configuration experience across complex, global tenants.
• Demonstrated current AI fluency - you can walk us through specific tools you use (Workato, Claude, GPT, Zapier, or equivalent), how you've integrated them into real work, and what you've built or automated as a result. Vague interest won't cut it.
• Proven delivery in high-stakes programs: M&A, new entity builds, or major org restructuring - where you owned the technical workstream from due diligence through stabilisation.
• Deep fluency in Workday's data model, security architecture, and business process framework, enough to reason confidently about downstream impact across modules you don't own.
• Comfort in the integrations layer: you know the difference between EIBs, Studio, Orchestrate, Core Connectors, and APIs, can read logs, and can triage issues independently without being an integrations developer.
• Strong documentation habits - you treat written documentation as a deliverable, not an afterthought, and you use AI to produce it faster without sacrificing quality.
• Strategic mindset: you push back when requests would create technical debt, come with informed opinions grounded in best practices, and shape the roadmap rather than waiting to be assigned work.
• Exceptional stakeholder communication skills - you can translate complex configuration decisions for both engineers and executives, and you know when to flag risk early.