Associate Director – Workday HCM Solution & Service delivery

Roles & Responsibilities:  

• Workday HCM Services Leadership Own the operating rhythm and service performance of the Workday HCM functional service, leading the team to manage request fulfilment, incident resolution, problem management, maintenance, release readiness, and continuous improvement. The ideal candidate should be able to establish clear ownership, service expectations, escalation paths, and performance reporting.
• Demand Shaping & Delivery Planning Partner with Process Owners, COEs, LBUs, and governance leads to clarify demand, assess functional and operational impacts, provide delivery estimates and dependencies, and convert approved priorities into executable delivery and release plans.
• Functional Solution Integrity & Oversight Provide functional leadership across Core HCM modules and the wider Workday HCM portfolio. Review proposed configurations and detailed designs to confirm that solutions are supportable, scalable, standardised, secure, and consistent with enterprise architecture and Workday design principles. Escalate material design decisions to the Solution Architect and relevant governance forums.
• End-to-End Solution Delivery Lead delivery of Workday HCM enhancements and initiatives from approved demand and detailed design through configuration, testing, deployment, hypercare, and transition to steady-state support. Ensure delivery remains aligned to agreed scope, design guardrails, priorities, quality standards, and business outcomes.
• Quality Assurance Direct and assure the quality of Workday configuration and functional deliverables from the team. Ensure peer review, configuration traceability, design-to-build alignment, and completion of required artefacts including configuration workbooks, test evidence, deployment plans, and change records. Own and scale automated testing for myHR — establishing a governed test-data library and automated regression coverage to reduce manual testing effort and post-deployment defects, and to improve release readiness and speed.
• Service Operations & Issue Resolution Oversee investigation and resolution of complex Workday issues, coordinating functional, integration, security, data, and technology teams as required. Drive root-cause analysis, corrective actions, knowledge capture, and preventative improvements for recurring or high-impact issues.
• Controls, Risk & Audit Readiness Ensure delivery and support activities comply with HR technology governance, security, privacy, risk, change-management, and audit requirements. Maintain complete and current evidence for approvals, access, testing, deployments, production changes, and operational controls. .
• Stakeholder & Partner Management Align HR and Technology stakeholders on delivery status, service performance, risks, decisions, dependencies, and recovery actions. Manage delivery commitments with internal teams and external partners, challenge constructively when quality or timelines are at risk, and maintain transparent communications.
• Workday Releases & Continuous Improvement Assess Workday releases, product enhancements, and service trends with functional leads and stakeholders. Prioritise relevant opportunities, coordinate release impact assessment and regression testing, and deliver improvements that enhance user experience, process efficiency, resilience, and platform value.
• AI & Agentic Capability Enablement  Assess, prioritise and embed Workday AI and agentic capabilities into HCM processes where there is a proven use case and data readiness, layering AI onto a stable, integrated Workday foundation rather than automating for its own sake. Partner with Group People Analytics and Group Technology to ensure use cases sit on trusted, governed data, and support the AI-enabled HR service delivery model (e.g. AskHR / HRSD) so that agentic actions triage, route and resolve within defined process guardrails and controls. 
• Team Leadership & Capability Building Build a cross-skilled, resilient team by deliberately reducing single-points-of-failure and key-person dependency across Workday HCM modules — establishing primary/ back-up coverage, cross-module rotation, and documented knowledge assets so work can be reallocated flexibly without service disruption. Coach the team to operate as trusted advisors rather than order-takers — probing the underlying business need, proposing standardised and scalable options, and constructively challenging requests that add complexity or deviate from design principles.
• Performance & Value Management Define and monitor delivery and service measures across demand throughput, delivery predictability, defects, incidents, resolution, release quality, stakeholder outcomes, and improvement benefits. Use evidence and lessons learned to focus resources and improve performance

Qualifications:  

• Overall 15+ years of experience in HR technology, HRIS delivery, Workday consulting, enterprise applications, or a comparable role, including leadership in complex, multi-country environments.
• Deep functional knowledge of Workday Core HCM and working expertise across multiple modules such as Absence, Time Tracking, Compensation and Advanced Compensation, Benefits, Recruiting, Talent, Performance, Succession, Learning, and Workforce Planning.
• Experience in leading Workday delivery from requirements and design through configuration, testing, deployment, stabilisation, and transition to support.
• Strong understanding of Workday foundations including organisations, staffing models, job and skills architecture, business processes, security, reporting, data, integrations, and tenant management dependencies.
• Proven service-delivery capability in leading teams to manage Workday service delivery, across incident, request, problem, change, release, knowledge, and continuous-improvement practices in an enterprise environment.
• Experience in establishing delivery controls, documentation standards, test governance, release readiness, operational metrics, and audit evidence.
• Ability to translate business priorities and solution designs into executable plans, manage competing demands, and make clear risk-based recommendations.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to lead root-cause analysis and communicate complex functional and technical matters to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated people leadership, coaching, partner management, and influencing skills across geographies, cultures, and cross-functional teams.
• Experience in Agile, Kaizen, or other iterative and continuous-improvement delivery environments.
• Practical experience embedding AI, agentic and automation capabilities (e.g. Workday AI features, automated testing) within an enterprise HRIS, including working familiarity with AI governance, data quality, and responsible-AI controls.