Did my Workday onsite in March 2026 for a senior SWE role. posting a full breakdown since the existing threads are stale.
Format: 5 rounds, one day, ran about 6 hours with breaks. Did it in-person at Pleasanton HQ. They still do in-person for some senior roles, not all. Ask your recruiter if it's required or optional.
Round 1: Technical coding. Two problems, 60 minutes. Both felt like medium difficulty. First was a graph traversal applied to an org-chart type problem. Second was string processing. I'd put them comfortably below what you'd see at a big-tech onsite but above a typical startup.
Round 2: System design. 60 minutes. Payroll / batch processing theme (see the other post on this). They care deeply about failure modes and data integrity.
Round 3: Behavioral / values. 45 minutes. Structured STAR questions. Cross-functional collaboration came up twice. One question explicitly about handling competing priorities with a real example.
Round 4: Architecture / second system design. 45 minutes. Less blank-slate design, more: here's a system, walk me through how you'd extend or debug it. More operational than R2.
Round 5: Hiring manager. 30-45 minutes. Mostly career trajectory and team fit. My HM was thoughtful, asked genuine questions about what I want to build. Felt more like a conversation than a screen.
Lunch break was provided, no evaluation during lunch as far as I could tell.
Overall vibe: lower pressure than big-tech onsites I've done (Google L5 comparison: Workday is less algorithmically intense but more domain-specific and culture-intensive). Interviewers were warm and prepared. Zero brainteasers.
Feedback came back in 6 business days. Offer was verbal on day 7, written on day 9.