Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Smartsheet empowers teams to manage work seamlessly and is uniting human teams with AI agents to automate tasks and uncover insights. The Manager, People Systems Engineering will lead the engineering team responsible for the People technology ecosystem and define its long-term technical strategy, architecture, data strategy, automation, and AI capabilities. The role will oversee Workday and related People platforms while improving employee experiences, system reliability, engineering practices, and enterprise integrations.
Responsibilities
- Own the technical strategy and long-term architecture for the People technology ecosystem, establishing a clear future state across Workday, Docebo, Greenhouse, integrations, employee data, automation, AI, and emerging capabilities
- Lead, coach, and develop the engineering team responsible for Smartsheet’s People platforms, creating a culture of technical ownership, experimentation, engineering rigor, and continuous improvement
- Serve as a technical leader for Workday, ensuring the platform remains well architected, maintainable, secure, scalable, and appropriately leveraged as a foundational system of record within the broader employee technology architecture
- Partner with the Product Manager for People Systems to translate employee and business problems into product and technical strategies, jointly shaping roadmaps while maintaining clear engineering ownership of architecture and implementation
- Continually evaluate the People technology landscape and challenge existing assumptions about how employee workflows should operate, identifying opportunities to simplify, consolidate, redesign, automate, or eliminate processes
- Define architectural boundaries across People platforms, determining which capabilities should live within Workday or other SaaS applications and where APIs, integrations, custom applications, automation, or AI provide better solutions
- Develop the technical strategy for People data, including authoritative sources, data models, system boundaries, data contracts, quality, lineage, access, lifecycle management, and reliable consumption by downstream systems
- Drive the evolution of People Systems toward an API-first and event-driven ecosystem where appropriate, reducing unnecessary point-to-point dependencies, manual data movement, and fragile integrations
- Define an AI and agentification strategy for employee technology, partnering with AI & Automation Engineering to identify where agents, conversational experiences, intelligent workflows, and AI-assisted processes can meaningfully improve employee and manager experiences
- Identify opportunities to move employee interactions away from navigating individual systems and toward simpler, intelligent experiences that orchestrate capabilities across the underlying People technology stack
- Establish a deliberate automation strategy across the employee lifecycle, reducing repetitive administration and manual handoffs across recruiting, onboarding, employee changes, compensation, learning, talent, and offboarding
- Introduce stronger software engineering practices into the People technology stack, including source control, peer review, CI/CD, environment management, observability, reusable components, documentation, and disciplined release practices where supported by the underlying platforms
- Establish a strategy for automated testing across People Systems, progressively reducing dependence on manual regression testing and improving confidence and speed as Workday and connected platforms change
- Define engineering standards for Workday configuration and extensibility, including when to use native configuration, Workday Studio, Workday Extend, APIs, integrations, automation, or external services
- Improve observability across critical employee workflows, integrations, scheduled processes, and data flows so failures and degradation can be identified proactively rather than through employee or business escalation
- Own the technical health of the People Systems portfolio, establishing mechanisms to identify and address architectural debt, fragile integrations, unnecessary customization, obsolete processes, platform limitations, and recurring operational issues
- Partner with Integration Engineering, AI & Automation, Data, Identity, Security, and other engineering teams to ensure People technology operates as part of a coherent enterprise architecture rather than as an isolated HR technology stack
- Evaluate emerging technologies and platform capabilities, separating meaningful opportunities from technology hype and developing pragmatic paths from experimentation to production
- Balance roadmap delivery with architectural modernization, platform reliability, technical debt, security, operational sustainability, and longer-term engineering investments
- Establish architecture reviews, technical standards, engineering metrics, and other mechanisms that raise the maturity of People Systems Engineering over time
- Communicate technical strategy, architecture decisions, investment needs, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to People & Culture, Product, Engineering, and senior leadership
- Recruit, onboard, mentor, and develop engineers with a combination of enterprise platform expertise, software engineering capability, systems thinking, and curiosity about the future of employee technology
Skills
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience
- 8+ years of experience across enterprise application engineering, software engineering, HR technology, systems architecture, or related technical disciplines
- 2+ years of experience managing or formally leading technical teams, with demonstrated ability to develop both people and technical capability
- Strong hands-on technical understanding of Workday, including its architecture, data model, security model, business processes, integrations, reporting, and extensibility capabilities
- Demonstrated experience defining technical strategy or architecture, rather than solely managing application delivery, configuration, or support
- Strong systems thinking and the ability to reason across applications, integrations, APIs, data, identity, automation, infrastructure, and employee experiences as a connected architecture
- Experience determining appropriate boundaries between SaaS configuration, platform extensibility, integrations, automation, and custom software development
- Experience designing or evolving enterprise data architecture, including systems of record, data models, interfaces, data contracts, quality, governance, and downstream consumption
- Experience introducing modern software engineering practices into enterprise SaaS or business systems environments
- Experience with testing strategy and automation, CI/CD, observability, release engineering, or other practices that improve the reliability and velocity of enterprise application development
- Understanding of modern AI capabilities and the ability to identify practical applications of agents, LLMs, and intelligent automation within enterprise workflows
- Experience partnering with Product Managers to combine product strategy, customer needs, and technical strategy into coherent roadmaps and investment decisions
- Demonstrated ability to challenge legacy processes and architectures constructively and develop pragmatic modernization strategies rather than simply maintaining the existing environment
- Ability to operate across both strategic architecture and detailed technical discussions, including the credibility to challenge engineers, vendors, implementation partners, and business stakeholders
- Strong understanding of security, privacy, access control, auditability, and data protection considerations associated with sensitive employee data
- Excellent analytical, verbal, and written communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical strategies and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences
- Experience with adjacent People platforms such as Docebo, Greenhouse, or similar technologies is a plus
- Experience with Workday Studio, Workday Extend, Workday APIs, cloud platforms, event-driven architectures, AI/agent platforms, or modern automation frameworks is a strong plus
Benefits
- Employer subsidized medical/vision and dental coverage for full-time employees
- 401k Match to help you save for your future (50% of your contribution up to the first 6% of your eligible pay)
- Monthly stipend to support your work and productivity
- Flexible Time Away Program, plus Sick Time Off
- US employees are automatically covered under Smartsheet-sponsored life insurance, short-term, and long-term disability plans
- US employees receive 12 paid holidays per year
- Up to 24 weeks of Parental Leave
- Personal paid Volunteer Day to support our community
- Opportunities for professional growth and development including access to Udemy online courses
- Company Funded Perks, including a counseling membership, local retail discounts, and your own personal Smartsheet account
- Teleworking options from any registered location in the U.S. (role specific)
- This role will be eligible for a market competitive incentive opportunity.
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