Workday Field / Application Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

Applied online for an applications engineer role. Recruiter scheduled an initial phone screen within a few days. The call was pretty standard with a quick question about an OOP example. About a week later, I had an hour-long video chat with the hiring manager, split between behavioral and technical parts. The behavioral section was really conversational. The technical part involved an OOP exercise using UML class diagrams – essentially, I had to improve a given UML diagram of a system. A week after that, I had a virtual onsite with 6 interviews in total, including 2 technical ones. I met several team and organizational members. The behavioral interviews were standard and conversational. One technical interview was a shared screen UML class diagram exercise where I had to design a system based on requirements. The other technical interview was a coding round (unexpectedly) about finding the longest distance to a leaf on a binary tree. I got feedback within 3 business days, told they went in a different direction due to technical needs. This wasn't a total shock as I hadn't used UML much before prepping and wasn't expecting a coding question. The process was good overall, even though I didn't get the job. The recruiter was great, keeping me updated and moving things along quickly. Everyone was really nice, which gave a good impression of the company culture. However, I did feel like Workday tends to recruit people with very similar academic backgrounds, which might not help with team diversity.

The hiring process started with a recruiter call, then two phone interviews, one focusing on behavioral aspects and the other on technical skills. Following this, there was an onsite interview phase which included five parts: behavioral and culture fit discussions, a product demonstration, and a technical interview. The recruiter was prompt with communication. The entire process spanned about a month and was very professional and well-organized.

A recruiter reached out about Application Development roles. I showed interest and we proceeded. First, a phone interview with a Software Manager, which was a screening for basic OO concepts and CV review. Second, a screenshare tech test with two developers where I had to model a real-life scenario using UML class/object diagrams, building on it as requirements were given. Third, a full day of onsite interviews covering System Architecture, QA, and cultural fit. A coordinator called beforehand with preparation advice. The interviews were pretty easy and the interviewers were nice. I got good feedback, but no offer came through due to changing requirements and the specific role I applied for becoming unavailable, which I suspected might happen based on a prior Glassdoor review. Important note: Workday differentiates between 'Software Application Engineers' who use a proprietary language (Xpresso) and 'Software Development Engineers' who use traditional languages.