Principal Workday Engineer (HRIS)

The Role: 

Generate Biomedicines is seeking a Principal Workday Engineer ( HRIS ) to strengthen and expand the integrations connecting our People and business systems. This is a hands-on builder role for someone who can design, develop, and support reliable, secure, and scalable integrations—with Workday at the center of the ecosystem.

Sitting at the intersection of People Technology, enterprise integrations, workflow automation, and applied AI, this role will help modernize how our systems, data, and employee workflows work together. You will own integrations from design through production support, partner with our in-house Workday functional expert to translate business needs into technical solutions, and collaborate with Enterprise Technology to deploy practical automation and AI-enabled workflows.

The work will directly improve employee experience, reduce manual effort, strengthen operational reliability, and help People & Culture adopt secure, sustainable technology solutions at scale. This is an exciting opportunity to build, troubleshoot, improve, and shape the future of Generate’s People Technology ecosystem. The Principal Workday Engineer will sit within People & Culture (P&C), and report to the Executive Director, P&C Business Partner and P&C Technology.

This role is part of a highly collaborative team environment and can be located in our Somerville, MA office or fully remote with occasional travel to our office. 

Here's how you will contribute:

Integrations Ownership and Delivery

· Serve as the technical owner for People Technology integrations, including design, build, testing, deployment, monitoring, troubleshooting, documentation, and ongoing support.

· Design and support inbound and outbound integrations across Workday, Greenhouse, adjacent People systems, and other G&A platforms.

· Partner with functional owners to translate business requirements into technical designs, field mappings, validation logic, testing plans, and sustainable support models.

· Build and maintain integrations using APIs, webhooks, SFTP, flat-file exchanges, middleware or iPaaS tools, scheduled data transfers, and event-based automation patterns.

· Support vendor implementations, tool changes, and system enhancements by assessing downstream impacts and executing required technical updates.

· Monitor production integrations, resolve failures and data discrepancies, and improve alerting, reliability, and operational resilience across critical employee lifecycle and business process data flows.

· Create and maintain technical documentation including integration diagrams, field mappings, runbooks, support procedures, test scripts, and change documentation.

People Technology and Operational Support

· Partner with the Workday functional lead to support integration-related operational needs across Workday, including benefits, time and absence, payroll, advanced compensation, talent and employee lifecycle processes and tooling.

· Collaborate with the Workday functional lead to align functional configurations and technical integrations, ensuring cohesive end-to-end solutions.

AI Partnership

· Partner with Enterprise Technology, People & Culture stakeholders, and AI teams to identify opportunities to leverage enterprise AI capabilities that enhance employee experience, streamline HR workflows, and improve operational efficiency.

· Support evaluation and deployment of secure, governed AI-enabled workflows where they are appropriate and tied to clear business needs

· Serve as a strategic thought partner to People & Culture leadership and teams, bringing forward emerging AI capabilities and shaping a practical roadmap for AI-enabled HR experiences and operations.

Cross-Functional Partnership

· Serve as the technical partner to P&C functional system owners, advising on scalable, secure, and supportable integration solutions.

· Collaborate with stakeholders across People & Culture, Finance, IT, Security, Legal, Procurement, Data, and external vendors to deliver reliable end-to-end workflows.

· Communicate technical tradeoffs clearly, including risks, dependencies, support needs, testing requirements, and change impacts

· Establish and promote best practices for integration design, testing, monitoring, change control, incident response, and post-go-live support for People Technology integrations.

The Ideal Candidate will have:

· Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Business Technology, Data/Analytics preferred or equivalent hands-on experience.

· 7 years of relevant People Technology (e.g. HRIS ) experience, including 5 years of Workday experience

· Strong hands-on experience architecting, designing, building, supporting, and troubleshooting enterprise systems integrations

· Experience working with APIs, webhooks, middleware, iPaaS tools, SFTP, flat files, ETL/ELT patterns, and scheduled data workflows.

· Strong understanding of data mapping, transformation logic, validation, monitoring, error handling, reconciliation, and production support

· Prior experience building and troubleshooting Workday integrations including EIBs, core connectors, templated, Studio, RaaS, and API

· Experience partnering on or implementing AI-enabled business process automation using enterprise AI platforms or workflow tools, preferably in HR, People Operations, or other G&A functions.

· Familiarity with AI tools and platforms such as Glean, Cursor, ChatGPT, Claude, Workday Agents, or similar solutions used for workflow automation, copilots, or agentic process design

· Experience coordinating with external vendors on technical requirements, testing, issue resolution, and change management.

· Strong documentation skills and the ability to bring structure to ambiguous systems problems.

· Clear communication and strong partnership skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

· A pragmatic mindset and sound judgment about where automation and AI can create real operational value.

Value-Add Experience

· Proficiency with Greenhouse integrations, including inbound and outbound data flows across recruiting and hiring workflows. Experience integrating Greenhouse with tools such as ModernLoop, Checker, BrightHire, and LinkedIn Recruiter.

· Integration experience with vendors such as Okta, Fidelity, Greenhouse, BCBS, Benepass, NetSuite, Adaptive Planning, Peakon, or Coupa.

· Experience building AI platforms or standalone AI infrastructure preferred.

· Workday reporting experience, including advanced, matrix, and trending reports.

· Experience supporting benefits, time and absence, payroll-related workflows, employee lifecycle operations, talent acquisition, or people analytics.

· Understanding of HR compliance, HR data security, access controls, and SOX-related considerations.

· Experience in a biotech, life sciences, healthcare, or other regulated environment.

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About Generate Biomedicines

We are a clinical-stage generative biology company pioneering the AI revolution in drug design and development. We are advancing a new approach to drug creation—one grounded in the ability to design proteins with defined biological intent. By integrating machine learning with large-scale experimentation, this approach aims to reduce the uncertainty, time, and cost associated with developing protein-based medicines.

Founded in 2018, we are advancing a growing pipeline of clinical and preclinical programs across multiple disease areas and protein modalities. By unifying computational design and clinical development within a single operating model, we translate this approach into clinical-stage programs and are leading a shift from traditional drug discovery toward systematic drug generation.

At Generate:Biomedicines, we collaborate across disciplines in new ways to invent and innovate. We bring diverse perspectives to a shared goal of delivering better medicines to patients in need, faster, guided by our values and leadership behaviors.

Generate:Biomedicines is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Generate:Biomedicines does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Generate:Biomedicines or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by the Company’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Generate:Biomedicines and the Company will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.

Compensation: The base salary range provided reflects our current estimate of what we anticipate paying for this position. Your actual base salary will be based on several factors, including job-related skills, experience, internal equity, relevant education or training, and market dynamics. In addition, you will be eligible for an annual bonus, equity compensation, and a competitive benefits package.

Per Year Salary Range

$154,000—$216,000 USD