Workday Business Systems Analyst, People Systems

Job Application for Workday Business Systems Analyst, People Systems at Anthropic

Workday Business Systems Analyst, People Systems San Francisco, CA

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

Anthropic is seeking a talented and driven Workday Business Systems Analyst to join our People Systems team. You'll own the technical configuration, testing, and operational excellence of our Workday HRIS across two domains: PATT and HCM. Your deepest work will be on the PATT side, where you'll refine our existing payroll, absence, and time tracking configuration and shape PATT design decisions as they're made. On the HCM side, you'll own core HCM data structures, business process frameworks, and the security model that underpins everything we do in Workday. You'll be relied on as a system expert for both strategic guidance and hands-on delivery.

This role is about moving the team forward, not just keeping the system running. The right candidate is passionate about where AI and internal tooling can make People Systems more effective, and treats "the way it's always been done" as a starting point to question rather than a constraint.

We're looking for someone who is naturally curious and an exceptional problem solver — the kind of person who looks beyond the obvious or "standard" Workday answer and asks why before how. You'll find success in this role if you thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth environment and know how to reprioritize without losing rigor. You'll partner across many parts of the business, from the broader People team to Finance, IT, and beyond, to make sure our HRIS is secure, scalable, and a true business enabler.

Responsibilities

PATT and HCM

Configure and maintain Payroll: pay components, earnings and deductions, pay groups, period schedules, and payroll-related business processes

Configure and maintain Absence: time-off plans, accrual rules, eligibility criteria, and leave types

Configure and maintain Time Tracking: time entry templates, validations, work schedules and calendars, and overtime calculations

Configure and maintain Core HCM foundations: supervisory organizations, staffing models, job profiles and job/compensation structures, custom organizations, and worker data integrity

Support annual and recurring People cycles in Workday, including compensation review setup, open enrollment configuration, and org restructures (mass supervisory org changes and job catalog updates)

Design, build, and maintain business process definitions in both domains, including condition rules, calculated fields, custom validations, routing and approval logic, and notifications

Partner with the Payroll team to troubleshoot configuration-driven payroll issues, including gross-to-net discrepancies, retro calculations, and off-cycle errors — the Payroll team owns processing; you own the configuration behind it

Bring a strong command of the Workday security model: role-based, user-based, and intersection security groups, domain security policies, business process security policies, and integration system users (ISUs), with sound judgment about when to leverage each as you configure and troubleshoot across domains

Support security and data audits in partnership with the broader team, using Workday delivered and custom audit reports to analyze access patterns, remediate exceptions, and uphold segregation of duties

Perform impact analysis before changes ship, including how HCM and security changes ripple into payroll, absence, and time data

Lead testing and adoption for Workday's twice-yearly releases across both domains: assess new features, run regression testing on critical business processes and security, and drive rollout of features we opt into

Across the platform

Translate business requirements from our internal partners into scalable system design, and document configuration decisions as you go

Build trusted relationships with partner teams, acting as a translator between technical configuration and business needs

Support change management for system updates and new functionality: communicate what's changing and why, prepare documentation and enablement materials, and make sure changes land well with the people who use them

Build and maintain advanced, matrix, and composite reports and dashboards; support mass data changes via EIB

Configure alerts, scheduled reports, and report security so the right data reaches the right people automatically

Triage and resolve day-to-day system issues, getting to root cause rather than patching symptoms

Actively look for where AI and automation can strengthen how People Systems works, from testing, documentation, and requirements drafting to ticket triage and report generation, using Anthropic's own tools as part of your daily workflow

Drive process automation and optimization opportunities with the broader People team and partner functions

Minimum Qualifications

Have deep hands-on working knowledge of Workday Payroll, Absence, and Time Tracking (PATT) configuration and design, business process configuration, and Security

Have hands-on working knowledge of Workday Core HCM

Have worked in a fast-paced, high-growth environment and know how to flex between roles

Possess strong technical skills including understanding of Workday architecture, security models, and integration methodologies

Have experience with full lifecycle Workday implementations and/or significant module expansions

Are intellectually curious, you ask "why" before "how," explore root causes rather than symptoms, and stay current on Workday and adjacent HR tech because you want to, not because you have to

Approach problems with creativity, comfortable looking past the standard or obvious solution to find an answer that actually fits the business

Treat HR data security and privacy as a non-negotiable foundation in everything you build and maintain

Excel at building relationships and communicating effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels

Are detail-oriented with strong documentation skills and a commitment to process excellence

Have a track record of managing multiple competing priorities, with a bias toward...