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TeamUp research · Workday hiring 2026

Prompting peaked in January: the AI skills Workday employers want now

Workday spent 2026 turning its platform into a home for AI agents. At the same time, employer demand for basic AI skills fell 25% from its peak while demand for hands-on AI skills rose 51%. Here is what that means for the analysts, admins and engineers who run Workday, and for the people hiring them.

By TeamUpPublished October 20, 20268 min read
+51%rise in employer demand for hands-on AI skills, like building tools and automating workflows, Sept 2025 to July 20261
−25%drop in demand for basic AI skills, like simple prompting, after peaking in January 20261
5,500+Workday customers using at least one of Workday's own AI agents as of mid-20263
40% vs 28%of business leaders expect AI to get more out of current staff, versus those who expect it to cut headcount1
01 · What Workday shipped

Agents are no longer a demo. They are in the tenant.

Workday now calls itself an enterprise AI platform for managing people, money and agents. It says it delivered 1.7 billion AI actions across its platform in fiscal 2026, alongside revenue of $9.55 billion and more than 11,500 customers.4 By its second quarter of fiscal 2027, the company said AI was driving more than 25% of its new annual contract value and that more than 5,500 customers were using at least one of its agents, up more than 35% from the prior quarter.3

The building blocks came through acquisitions and partnerships. Workday's annual report describes buying Sana (enterprise knowledge and search), Flowise (a low-code agent builder) and Pipedream (an integration platform for AI agents), and an Agent System of Record where customers register agents, including ones built on Microsoft's tools.5

At Workday Rising in Las Vegas (October 12 to 15, 2026), the company went further:

  • Autopilot agents for recruiting, payroll, accounting and deployment that run routine work in the background under the customer's existing permissions and approvals. The Talent Acquisition agent is with early adopters now; Payroll, Accounting and Deployment autopilots are planned for early adopters in early 2027.2
  • A "headless" agent platform, with MCP-based Agent-Ready Tools, a Developer Agent that turns plain-language requests into custom agents and apps, and Live Data Query for SQL access to live Workday data.6
  • Work Intelligence, an early-access tool that breaks each job into tasks and links them to skills, built on a Skills Cloud that Workday says more than 3,450 customers use.7
Worth knowingMuch of this is early access or planned for 2027, and Workday's own release says unreleased features are subject to change.2 Most tenants will feel it gradually, not overnight.
02 · Tasks that shrink, tasks that grow

The agents take the first draft. People keep the sign-off.

Read Workday's own descriptions of what the agents do and a pattern shows up. They gather, check, draft and propose. A person reviews, approves and owns the outcome. Every action is logged, and customers decide which tasks run automatically and which need a human.2 Here is how that maps onto day-to-day Workday work.

Likely to shrink

  • Pre-payroll data checks and retro auditsThe Payroll agent checks for gaps before a run, audits retroactive adjustments and flags exceptions.2
  • Interview scheduling and first-pass outreachThe Talent Acquisition agent flags at-risk requisitions, finds candidates, drafts outreach and coordinates interviews.2
  • Preparing routine accounting entriesThe Accounting agent extracts contract details, prepares entries and tests transactions for audit readiness.2
  • Drafting configuration and test plansThe Deployment agent flags unused features and regulatory changes and prepares configuration and testing plans for approval.2
  • Digging through documentationThe Deployment Agent assistant answers how-to questions and helps interpret SOAP and integration errors.8

Likely to grow

  • Reviewing and approving agent outputAgents propose; customers approve. Someone has to know the tenant well enough to say no.2
  • Security design for people and agentsAgents inherit the company's permissions and approval rules, so security groups and business process policies matter more, not less.2
  • Building on the platformCustom agents, MCP tools, Live Data Query and Extend open real build work to analysts who can script and model data.6
  • Data quality and validationWorkday's documentation says the Deployment Agent's answers can be inaccurate or incomplete and must be checked against official docs.8
  • Process and job redesignTools like Work Intelligence are built to show how AI shifts tasks inside each role, which HR and finance teams then have to act on.7
Our readThe tasks that shrink are the repetitive middle of the job. The tasks that grow sit at both ends: designing how the tenant should behave, and checking that it did. That favors people who understand why a configuration exists, not only how to click through it.
03 · What employers ask for

Employers moved from "uses AI" to "builds with AI"

Workday's 2026 Global Workforce Report tracked skills in job requisitions at roughly 550 enterprise employers using Workday Recruiting from September 2025 to July 2026. Its conclusion is blunt: companies have moved on from wanting people who can just use AI to wanting people who can build with it.1

Change in skill mentions in job requisitions

Roughly 550 enterprise employers using Workday Recruiting.1 Hover or tap a bar for the period behind it.

Show as a table
Skill groupPeriodChange
Source: Workday Global Workforce Report 2026. These are all job types, not only Workday systems roles. The basic AI figure is measured from its January 2026 peak; the others run September 2025 to July 2026.

Outside Workday's data, the direction is the same. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 expects 39% of workers' existing skill sets to be transformed or outdated by 2030, puts AI and big data at the top of the fastest-growing skills, and says two-thirds of employers plan to hire talent with specific AI skills.10 LinkedIn expects 70% of the skills used in most jobs to change by 2030.12 Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index found 78% of leaders considering hiring for AI-specific roles, with AI agent specialist among the titles they named (30%).11

The mix of skills matters too. Workday's 2025 State of Skills research found 51% of business leaders worried about future talent shortages, only 32% confident their organization has the skills it needs, and 55% already moving to a skills-based talent model.9

04 · What live Workday job posts say

The fundamentals still dominate. AI is the new line at the bottom.

To see how this shows up in Workday jobs specifically, we read 24 live postings for Workday analyst, administrator, consultant and engineer roles in October 2026 and checked what each one asked for. Reporting, integrations and security were near-universal. AI appeared in one in three, usually as a "nice to have" or a general expectation to use AI tools.

Share of Workday job postings that mention each skill

TeamUp sample of 24 live postings, October 2026. Hover or tap a bar for the count.

Show as a table
Mentioned in the rolePostingsShare
Method: TeamUp sample, not a statistical survey. We found postings through nine web searches of public job boards (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Built In, employer career sites), kept the 24 that were Workday-focused and still open, and counted a skill only when it appeared in the role's duties or requirements. AI mentions in hiring-process notices or company boilerplate were excluded. One search included the word "AI", and the sample leans toward tech employers, so the AI share is likely higher than across all Workday employers. Postings are listed under Sources.

Two details stood out. Of the 8 postings that mentioned AI, 7 were at tech companies, including 3 at AI companies. And only 2 named agents directly: one asked for experience "building solutions using AI tools such as Workday Agents", the other for interest in "agentic systems" and "LLM-powered workflow design". Outside tech, the posts we read looked much like they would have two years ago.

Our readJob descriptions trail the technology. Most Workday employers are still hiring for reports, security and integrations, and the agents Workday announced at Rising depend on exactly those foundations. Expect AI requirements to spread from tech employers outward through 2027 as autopilot agents leave early access.
05 · What it means for hiring

AI is rewriting Workday jobs more than cutting them

The headcount story is more balanced than the headlines. In Workday's survey of 6,001 employees and business leaders, 40% of leaders expect AI to help them get more out of the people they already have, while 28% expect it to reduce headcount.1 The WEF report is similar in shape: 40% of employers expect to reduce staff where AI can automate tasks, but it projects 170 million jobs created against 92 million displaced by 2030.10

Hiring itself has gotten noisier. Workday's data shows the median number of applicants per filled job rose to 69 from 58 a year earlier, and 84% of job seekers said they used AI in their search. Time to fill held at about 60 days.1 More applications are arriving, but not more qualified people.

Inside companies, growth paths are narrowing. Internal moves fell at 57% of employers, and while 79% of workers say they know which skills they need, only 66% say their employer helps them build those skills.1 For Workday teams, that means the person who can configure, secure and build on agents is often hired, not grown.

For hiring managers

Six skills to screen for in 2026

  1. Security that covers agents

    Agents act with the permissions they are given. Ask candidates how they would scope a security group for an integration system user or an agent, and how they would audit it.

  2. Business process judgment

    If an agent drafts a configuration change, someone has to know whether it breaks a downstream step. Have candidates walk through a business process they redesigned and why.

  3. Reporting and data fluency

    Reporting showed up in 23 of the 24 postings we read. Calculated fields, Prism and now SQL through Live Data Query are how agent output gets checked.

  4. Integration and API basics

    EIB, Studio and web services are still core, and MCP tools and REST APIs are where agents connect. Ask what they have built, not what they have touched.

  5. Hands-on AI, not just prompting

    Employer demand moved from prompting to building. Look for someone who has automated a real workflow, built a small tool or tested an agent against edge cases.

  6. Healthy skepticism

    Workday's own docs say its assistant can be wrong. The best candidates verify AI output against the tenant and the documentation before it ships.

TeamUp

Hiring for a Workday role?

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Sources & method

TeamUp is a new firm and this report does not use TeamUp placement data. Every figure comes from the public sources below, except the job-posting sample, which is TeamUp's own count with its method stated next to the chart. Figures from Workday describe Workday's own surveys, customer data and products. Product availability is as Workday stated it on the dates shown.

  1. Workday, Workday Global Workforce Report: AI Is Rewriting Jobs More Than It's Cutting Them, October 5, 2026, and the full report (PDF). Surveys of 6,001 employees and leaders, 5,944 workers and 6,000 full-time employees; job requisition skills data from roughly 550 employers, Sept 2025 to July 2026.
  2. Workday, Workday Launches Autopilot Agents That Get Real Work Done Across HR, Finance, and IT, October 13, 2026.
  3. Workday, Workday Announces Fiscal 2027 Second Quarter Financial Results, August 27, 2026.
  4. Workday, Workday Announces Fiscal 2026 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Financial Results, February 24, 2026.
  5. Workday, Inc., Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, SEC.
  6. Workday, Workday's Trusted Agent Platform Now Delivers Headless Access to HR and Finance, October 13, 2026.
  7. Workday, Workday Introduces Work Intelligence to Help Customers Design Work for AI, October 13, 2026.
  8. Workday, Administrator Guide: Workday Deployment Agent.
  9. Workday, Talent Shortage Concerns Drive Shift to Skills-Based Strategies, March 5, 2025 (2,300 director-level and above leaders, surveyed by Hanover Research, November 2024).
  10. World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs Report 2025: Digest.
  11. Microsoft, 2025 Work Trend Index: The Year the Frontier Firm Is Born (31,000 workers in 31 markets, February to March 2025).
  12. LinkedIn, Work Change Report, January 15, 2025.
  13. TeamUp sample of 24 live Workday job postings, read October 2026. Some boards may have closed these postings since.
    Show the 24 postings
    1. Inizio, Workday Business Analyst
    2. Jobgether, Senior Staff Engineer, Workday Financial Technical Consultant
    3. Jobgether, Workday Financials Consulting
    4. Jobgether, Workday Certified Financial Consultant, Accounting Center
    5. Jobgether, Workday Financials Consultant
    6. ELB Learning, Workday HCM / Financials Administrator
    7. EarnIn, Sr HRIS Analyst
    8. Jobgether, Workday Integration Engineer
    9. Jobgether, Workday Integrations Principal Consultant
    10. Pattern, Workday Analyst
    11. Jane Street, Workday Financials Specialist
    12. Freshworks, HRIS Analyst, Workday (Contract)
    13. Applied Materials, Workday HRIS Analyst
    14. GitLab, Staff Workday Analyst
    15. MARA, People Systems Administrator
    16. Ramp, HRIS Analyst (Workday)
    17. OpenAI, Workday Engineer
    18. Illumio, Sr. HRIS Applications Analyst, Workday
    19. Baseten, Workday Senior Analyst
    20. OpenAI, People Technology Analyst, Workday PATT & Benefits
    21. Lead Workday Analyst (Built In listing)
    22. Junior Data Informatics Analyst, Workday Core Applications (Built In listing)
    23. University of Texas at Austin, Senior Workday Analyst
    24. Presbyterian Healthcare Services, Workday HCM Analyst