Workday System Administrator

The Workday System Administrator is a member of the Enterprise Systems team and serves as the primary administrator for Workday Student, working alongside a counterpart administrator who leads HCM, Finance, and Payroll. The role owns Student security, business process, and tenant administration, leads duplicate record management, and provides secondary coverage across the other Workday modules. The administrator also evaluates new Workday capabilities, including AI agents and platform extensions, and helps the University adopt them securely and in compliance with FERPA, GLBA, and other applicable regulations.

The ideal candidate has Workday security administration experience, functional knowledge of Student business processes, and a demonstrated commitment to keeping pace with an evolving Workday platform.

• Own business process administration, tenant and environment management, data refreshes, and the migration of changes to production for Workday Student and share these duties with the counterpart administrator where configuration is common across modules.

• Perform configuration, maintenance, data loads, and support ticket resolution, and monitor system health, integrations, scheduled jobs, and alerts.

• Participate in the Change Control process to review, approve, and execute changes to Workday configuration, security, and IT-developed solutions.

• Provide hands-on escalation support for cross-functional issues involving Workday, its integrations, and connected enterprise platforms.

• Serve as the primary security administrator for Workday Student and the secondary administrator for HCM, Finance, and Payroll, including security groups, domain and business process policies, user provisioning, authentication, and proxy access.

• Partner with functional leads to design role-based access that applies segregation of duties and least-privilege principles.

• Serve as the primary owner of duplicate management, resolving duplicate person records and account provisioning conflicts in coordination with Admissions, the Registrar, and Human Resources.

• Conduct regular access reviews and audits, support FERPA and GLBA compliance, and maintain documentation of security configurations and controls.

• Assess each Workday release for its impact on configuration, security, and business processes, and coordinate unit, integration, and user acceptance testing and adoption.

• Maintain current knowledge of the Workday product roadmap, including AI agents, developer and extension tools, data and analytics services, and new user experiences, through Workday Community, release notes, training, and the Workday Rising conference.

• Evaluate new capabilities for institutional fit, and define the security, data access, and governance controls required before they are enabled, including the permissions and oversight of AI agents operating in the tenant.

• Partner with functional leads to translate business needs into scalable configuration, including business processes, calculated fields, and routing rules.

• Identify opportunities for process improvement and automation, including how third-party applications integrate with Workday.

• Build and maintain reports and dashboards using Workday reporting tools.

• Document business processes and provide end-user training.

• Provide peer review and technical guidance, and contribute hands-on configuration, integration, and reporting work during peak periods and high-priority initiatives.

• Train ITS staff and functional leads to provide secondary support, and foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.

• 3 to 5 years of Workday administration experience, including at least 3 years of security administration

• Experience with Workday reporting, calculated fields, EIB, RaaS, and web services (SOAP, REST, XML, XSLT, JSON)

• Functional knowledge of Workday Student, HCM, Finance, or Payroll and the Workday business process framework

• Working knowledge of segregation of duties, least-privilege access, FERPA, and GLBA

• Familiarity with ITIL change control, SDLC, and Agile practices

• Bachelor’s degree in a technology field or equivalent professional experience

• Workday Student experience and a higher education background

• Workday Pro or partner certification in Student, Security, Integrations, Reporting, or Extend

• Experience with Workday platform and developer tools, such as Studio, Extend, Prism Analytics, Journeys, or their successors

• Experience configuring or governing AI capabilities in enterprise systems, such as Workday Illuminate (Sana) agents

• Experience with SQL or WQL, and with data and analytics platforms such as Snowflake and Tableau

• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and root-cause analysis skills

• Ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical business owners

• Strong organizational and time management skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines

• Collaborative, service-oriented approach to working with colleagues and University partners

• Self-directed, with intellectual curiosity and a commitment to continuous learning as the Workday platform evolves

• On-campus work preferred; remote and hybrid arrangements will be considered upon request

• Occasional travel to Campus (if remote), Workday training and the annual Workday Rising conference

• Occasional evening and weekend work may be required

Performs such other duties, responsibilities, and activities as required by supervisor and as departmental/University needs indicate. 
 

*Disclaimer

The above information indicates the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain and should not be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, activities, and/or qualifications required or expected of employees assigned to this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change and new ones may be assigned at any time, with or without notice.

All offers of employment are contingent upon a satisfactory background check.

Fairfield University provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

Eligible employees may receive health, dental, retirement, paid time off, tuition benefits, and other benefits according to institutional policy. Fairfield University Benefits