Principal Functional Consultant

About the Role

As a Principal Functional Consultant, oCFO Architect, you will play a pivotal role in driving finance transformation and continuous innovation for our prospects and customers. You will partner closely with the extended sales team to accelerate subscription and services growth, owning the high-level solution design and demonstrating Workday's transformational value during complex pre-sales cycles. You will collaborate directly with customer executives, project leadership, and workstream leads to architect end-to-end Financial solutions, ensuring design closure is achieved on time, on budget, and aligned with modern industry best practices.

You will lead cross-functional design decisions using Workday’s guiding principles, business process taxonomy, and emerging AI capabilities to challenge status-quo thinking. You will facilitate structured decision-making, ensuring that solution recommendations are tightly aligned to customer problem statements, strategic objectives, and next-generation value drivers like automated accounting and predictive insights. You will lead key pre-sales and post-sales design workshops, constructively challenging partners and customers to embrace digital transformation over legacy replication, and shape post-go-live roadmaps so that customers continue to maximize value and drive innovation through the Workday platform.

About You

Basic Qualifications

7+ years of functional experience in FIN software solutions including 4+ years of implementation consulting or pre-sales solution architecting experience leading digital finance transformations

Proven experience supporting sales cycles, scoping complex deployments, and leading end‑to‑end FIN solution design on multi‑country transformation programmes.

Deep knowledge of Workday Financials, including familiarity with Workday’s AI/ML-driven finance features (e.g., automated ledger entries, anomaly detection, predictive analytics, agents).

Fluent in English and German

Other Qualifications

Transformation & Innovation Leadership: Demonstrated ability to act as a strategic advisor to the Office of the CFO, helping global organizations re-engineer outdated business models, foster a culture of innovation, and unlock modern operating efficiencies.

Sales & Pre-Sales Enablement: Strong track record of supporting the sales ecosystem by participating in high-impact client pitches, shaping responses to complex RFPs/RFIs, scoping services efforts, and clearly articulating the transformational ROI of Workday's architecture to C-suite buyers.

AI & Innovation Stewardship: Proven capability to leverage AI, automation, and Machine Learning tools to design touchless accounting flows, enabling finance teams to shift from transactional processing to strategic, predictive data analysis.

Ability to act as trusted advisor to Fin leadership, connecting solution recommendations to business strategy, key metrics, and executive priorities.

Strong track record driving decision‑making across diverse stakeholder groups, including use of structured frameworks and escalation paths.

Experience refining financial operating models, process taxonomies, and governance structures for global organisations, including global vs. local design and template protection.

Proven ability to collaborate effectively with systems integrators, reviewing and challenging proposed designs to align with Workday best practices and reduce delivery risk.

Comfort working in high‑stakes environments where timelines, budgets, and quality are tightly managed, with a focus on risk identification, mitigation, and clear, executive‑ready communication.

A detail-driven problem solver, with a passion for delivering exceptional levels of customer service.

Excellent verbal and written communication skills and comfortable presenting to both prospective buyers and current clients.

Ability and desire to learn technology quickly through a mix of different mediums.

Resourceful and adaptable; comfortable working remotely, utilising a variety of collaboration and productivity tools with a high degree of autonomy.

Under normal circumstances, ability to travel up to 30% of time as customer and sales pipeline needs require.

Workday Pay Transparency Statement (For EU Locations Only)

Listed below is the base salary range applicable to this position. Workday pay ranges (and the precise pay offered to the successful candidate) are based on a number of objective criteria such as relevant experience and skills, and educational qualifications, level of responsibility, demands of the role, work location and business need. As a