Lead Enterprise Applications Analyst (Workday)

What You'll Do

Role Overview

This role serves as a senior technical leader responsible for designing, configuring, and optimizing Workday solutions, with a primary focus on Workday Recruiting and its integration with the broader recruiting technology ecosystem. This individual analyzes complex talent acquisition challenges and translates them into scalable, efficient system solutions.

As a senior-level role, this position owns end-to-end solution design, drives system strategy, and leads cross-functional initiatives, ensuring Workday Recruiting capabilities along with integrated tools such as Paradox, BrightHire, and HiredScore are effectively leveraged to support evolving talent acquisition and business strategies. The role partners closely with Talent Acquisition, HR, IT, and external vendors to deliver high-impact, candidate- and recruiter-centric solutions.

How This Role Elevates Avalara

• Team Impact: Raises the capability of the People Technology function by introducing scalable recruiting system design, improving configuration quality, and mentoring others to operate at a higher technical and analytical standard.

• Business Impact: Enables faster, more accurate hiring decisions by reducing manual recruiting processes, improving candidate data integrity, and embedding automation and AI-driven screening/scheduling into core talent acquisition workflows.

• Customer (Candidate & Recruiter) Impact: Improves candidate and recruiter experience by simplifying the hiring process, increasing transparency in interviewing and evaluation, and delivering reliable, intuitive Workday Recruiting solutions integrated with best-in-class recruiting tools.

By strengthening the foundation of People Technology, this role directly improves time-to-hire, quality of hire, decision quality, and operational scale across the organization.

What Your Responsibilities Will Be

Responsibilities

• Own Workday Recruiting solution design: Deliver scalable, maintainable system configurations across sourcing, candidate management, interview scheduling, offer management, and onboarding handoff that reduce complexity and enable global consistency.

• Design and manage recruiting technology integrations: Architect and optimize integrations between Workday Recruiting and third-party tools such as Paradox (conversational AI/chatbot sourcing and scheduling), BrightHire (interview intelligence), and HiredScore (AI-driven candidate matching and prioritization), ensuring seamless data flow and a unified recruiter/candidate experience.

• Translate complex business problems into system solutions: Identify gaps, inefficiencies, and risks in current recruiting processes and implement automated solutions that improve speed, accuracy, and scalability.

• Lead cross-functional initiatives: Drive large-scale enhancements and programs across Talent Acquisition, HR, IT, and external vendors, ensuring alignment, execution quality, and measurable outcomes.

• Ensure system quality and reliability: Own system testing strategy and release readiness for Workday Recruiting and connected tools, delivering defect-free deployments that meet business requirements.

• Drive continuous improvement and simplification: Reduce manual recruiting work, eliminate redundant processes, and standardize configurations to improve operational efficiency and maintainability.

• Serve as a technical and functional leader: Act as the primary escalation point for complex recruiting system issues and guide stakeholders toward optimal solutions based on best practices and system capabilities.

• Influence the People Technology roadmap: Identify and prioritize enhancements that drive measurable business value, including adoption of new Workday Recruiting capabilities and emerging recruiting AI tools.

What You'll Need to be Successful

12Month Success Signals

• Recruiting processes are fully optimized in Workday, with measurable reductions in manual effort and time-to-hire

• Paradox, BrightHire, and/or HiredScore integrations (where applicable) are stable, well-adopted, and delivering measurable recruiter/candidate experience improvements

• At least 2–3 major system improvements or automations delivered that reduce operational overhead or improve hiring decision quality

• Stakeholders (Talent Acquisition, HR, Finance) report increased confidence in candidate data accuracy and system reliability

• Workday Recruiting configurations are simplified and standardized, reducing technical debt and improving maintainability

• Release cycles (including Workday updates) are executed with minimal defects and strong adoption

• Clear roadmap established linking recruiting technology investments to business outcomes and efficiency gains

AI Expectations

This role is expected to demonstrate applied AI capability that materially improves recruiting outcomes:

• Use AI tools to accelerate requirements analysis, configuration design, and documentation, reducing delivery timelines

• Apply AI to analyze recruiting data (across Workday and integrated tools) to identify trends, anomalies, and optimization opportunities in sourcing, screening, and hiring

• Leverage AI-powered platforms like Paradox, BrightHire, and HiredScore to automate repetitive tasks (e.g., candidate screening, interview scheduling, interview evaluation) and improve quality at scale

• Identify and implement AI-driven opportunities that improve decision-making, efficiency, or candidate/recruiter experience

• Share AI best practices and elevate the team's ability to use AI effectively in recruiting system design and operations

Success in this role requires demonstrated, measurable impact from AI usage, not just familiarity with tools.

Required Qualifications

• B.S. in Computer Science, Information Systems, or Engineering

• 10+ years of experience in HRIS, Talent Acquisition Technology, or enterprise systems roles

• 5+ years of hands-on Workday configuration experience, with deep expertise in Workday Recruiting

• Demonstrated expertise in end-to-end recruiting process design: sourcing, candidate management, interview scheduling, offers, and onboarding handoff

• Experience analyzing complex talent acquisition problems and delivering scalable system solutions

• Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives and influence stakeholders

• Strong understanding of end-to-end recruiting processes, candidate data structures, and system integrations

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with Paradox, BrightHire, and/or HiredScore, including integration with Workday Recruiting

• Experience evaluating, implementing, or optimizing AI-driven recruiting technologies

• Familiarity with recruiting compliance and data privacy considerations across integrated third-party platforms

Bar Raiser Expectations

• Raises the standard of system design and decision quality: Delivers scalable, high-quality Workday Recruiting solutions and improves how hiring decisions are made through data, structured thinking, and clear tradeoff analysis.

• Drives accountability and measurable outcomes: Holds self and cross-functional partners to high standards, ensuring delivery of outcomes that improve time-to-hire, data accuracy, and candidate/recruiter experience.

• Simplifies and scales operations: Reduces complexity in recruiting systems and processes, standardizing and automating where possible to improve maintainability and scalability.

• Elevates team capability and long-term impact: Mentors others, challenges assumptions, and leaves systems, processes, and team performance stronger than they were before.

AI Bar Raiser Expectations

• Applies AI to accelerate system design and delivery: Uses AI to improve requirements gathering, solution design, testing, and documentation, reducing delivery timelines while maintaining high quality.

• Drives data-driven insights and decision making: Leverages AI to analyze Workday and HR data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities that improve business outcomes.

• Automates and scales operations: Implements AI-driven automation across testing, data validation, reporting, and workflows to increase efficiency, reduce errors, and improve scalability.

• Delivers measurable and responsible AI impact: Identifies high-value AI use cases, quantifies outcomes, ensures secure and compliant usage, and elevates team adoption of AI best practices.

How We'll Take Care of You

Total Rewards

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.

Health & Wellness

Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.