Senior People Technology Engineer (Workday Time & Absence)

As a Senior People Technology Engineer (Workday Time & Absence), you will act as the principal technical product partner and Domain SME for our global absence and time-tracking architecture. You will possess the autonomy to own the domain strategy and navigate highly complex legislative environments across the EMEA region and beyond. This is an urgent, high-impact role: you will lead the immediate remediation of legacy setup issues, ensure SOX compliance, and unblock our global expansion.

Beyond immediate project delivery, you will play a key role in our long-term vision: evolving into a dedicated, regionally aligned People Operations (POps) adjacent product team. You will drive continuous process optimizations, regional feature enablement, and holistic Workday support, ensuring our T&A ecosystem is scalable, secure, and legally compliant.

How we work:

We apply engineering principles to People Tech. You’ll be part of a team that values documentation, peer reviews, and scalable architecture. We empower teams to make decisions and take ownership. We value clear outcomes, strong cross-functional partnerships and measurable impact.

What you will be working on:

• Functional Configuration & Complex Architecture: Lead the hands-on architectural design and configuration of Workday Time Tracking and Absence Management. Build complex, highly customized statutory leave plans, time entry validations, and holiday logic for our global workforce.

• Domain Ownership & SOX Compliance: Take end-to-end responsibility for the technical health, reliability, and compliance of the T&A domain. Ensure all setups meet strict SOX compliance, financial audit requirements, and local labor laws, actively managing risk and technical debt.

• Strategic Stakeholder Partnership: Act as a true product partner to senior regional People Operations leaders (primarily EMEA). Translate complex legal requirements into scalable Workday functionality and advise stakeholders on system capabilities and best practices.

• Operational Excellence: Oversee the resolution of complex technical escalations. Identify root causes in our existing absence setup and architect long-term, scalable fixes rather than temporary patches.

• Technical Roadmap & Mentorship: Define the long-term technical roadmap for T&A in alignment with Wise’s global expansion plans. Act as a mentor and escalation point for standard contributors (IC2s) within the regional operational model.

Qualifications

• Deep Domain Expertise: Extensive, senior-level experience in Workday Time Tracking and Absence Management configuration, including building complex, multi-country statutory leave plans and time-entry rules from scratch.

• Risk & Compliance Acumen: Proven experience managing SOX controls, internal audits, and stringent legislative changes within an HRIS environment.

• Autonomy & Product Mindset: You are capable of owning a domain strategy independently, making high-level architectural decisions, and acting as a peer to senior business leaders.

• Problem-Solving Mindset: You are analytically minded—capable of translating convoluted legal jargon and local operational nuances into clean, effective system logic.

• Engineering Values: An egoless approach to work, a deep focus on data security/confidentiality, and a commitment to high-quality testing and documentation.

Nice to Have:

• Workday Core HCM, Time Tracking, or Absence Management certifications.

• Experience in broader Workday modules (e.g., Payroll integrations, Compensation) to support our long-term shift to a holistic POps product team model.

• Experience implementing Workday for new country launches in a hyper-growth environment.

Eligibility Requirements:

• You're placed in Tallinn, Estonia.