Sr Software Developer (Data Agents)

Dayforce is a global human capital management (HCM) company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, with operations across North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA), and the Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) region. 

Our award-winning Cloud HCM platform offers a unified solution database and continuous calculation engine, driving efficiency, productivity and compliance for the global workforce.

Our brand promise - Makes Work Life Better™ - Reflects our commitment to employees, customers, partners and communities globally. 
This posting represents an ongoing opportunity within our organization. While there may not be an active vacancy at this time, we encourage interested candidates to apply. Applications will be reviewed periodically and retained for future openings.

About the opportunity

We are looking for a Senior Software Developer to join the team building AI Agent capabilities in Dayforce, with a focus on data-centric agents. This role is ideal for someone who can design, build, and ship production-quality agent systems—including a natural language to SQL (NL2SQL) solution—using modern agent frameworks (LangChain, LangGraph, Python) and AI development tools (Copilot, Claude, GitHub Copilot Agents, IDE agents, and internal agents). The goal is to accelerate delivery while maintaining high standards for quality, security, and operational excellence.

This is a high-impact role. You will help transform how millions of users across 150+ countries interact with Dayforce by enabling natural language access to data and automating complex data workflows through intelligent agents. You will work across the full software lifecycle—architecture, design, prototyping, implementation, testing, release, and production operations—and partner closely with product, platform, and engineering teams.

What you'll get to do

Design and Build Data Agents

Design, build, and maintain data-centric AI agents, including an NL2SQL solution that translates natural language queries into accurate and performant SQL against complex enterprise data models

Develop agent architectures using LangChain, LangGraph, and Python, including tool use, multi-step workflows, and structured reasoning patterns

Build robust evaluation, testing, and observability patterns to ensure correctness, reliability, and safety of agent outputs

Design and implement guardrails, validation layers, and sandboxed execution environments to safely run generated SQL and agent-produced code in production

Continuously improve agent accuracy and relevance through prompt engineering, fine-tuning strategies, and feedback loops

Build and Ship High-Scale Systems

Design and implement new microservices, evolve existing services, and build or consume well-designed APIs to support agent and data workflows

Own critical areas of the agent codebase and provide technical stewardship for shared patterns and libraries

Improve performance, relevance, and reliability of data agent services through profiling, tuning, and iterative optimization

Build tooling and automation around releases, integrations, and operational workflows
Contribute to long-term improvements in production support, incident learnings, reliability, and operational maturity

AI-Accelerated Engineering

AI-assisted development is a core and critical part of this role. You will actively use AI tools to increase engineering throughput while maintaining correctness, maintainability, and security.

AI-assisted scaffolding with rigorous human review

AI-generated test suites and regression harnesses

Fast refactoring and modernization supported by automated verification

Agentic workflows for repetitive engineering tasks such as migrations, API clients, documentation, and runbooks

Secure and responsible AI usage with strong review discipline, no sensitive data leakage, and traceable change sets

Product Partnership and Engineering Culture

Partner with product and engineering stakeholders to understand data access needs and translate them into agent-driven solutions

Translate business requirements into clear, well-reasoned technical designs

Present system designs and complex technical topics to both technical and non-technical audiences

Mentor peers through pairing, coaching, and high-quality code and design reviews

Take an organization-first approach to accountability, prioritizing business outcomes over individual ownership

Skills and experience we value

Must-Have Experience

Strong Python development experience with a proven track record of building production systems

Hands-on experience building agents using LangChain, LangGraph, or comparable frameworks, including tool use and multi-step workflows

Experience building or contributing to NL2SQL or other natural-language-to-structured-query systems

Strong SQL expertise, including complex query authoring, optimization, and schema comprehension across large, normalized data models

Solid system fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, design patterns, API design, and reliability engineering

Experience with microservices and API-based architectures

Experience with cloud platforms, with Azure strongly preferred

Experience testing and evaluating LLM-based systems for accuracy, safety, and hallucination mitigation

Familiarity with version control and CI/CD workflows using Git, GitHub, or Azure DevOps

AI Tooling Fluency (Required)

Demonstrated use of AI tools to accelerate feature delivery while maintaining high-quality pull requests

Rapid prototyping and iteration supported by automated tests

Refactoring and modernization with strong automated safety nets

Effective use of AI for debugging, including log analysis, hypothesis generation, and targeted fixes

Nice-to-Have / Standout Experience

Experience with recursive language models (RLMs) and iterative inference strategies

Experience with sandboxed execution environments for safely running dynamic or generated code

Background in data engineering, including ETL/ELT pipelines, data modeling, and data warehousing

Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases, and embedding-based retrieval

Kubernetes experience, including deployments, scaling, and troubleshooting

Azure PaaS experience, such as Azure SQL, Functions, Key Vault, Storage, Azure Monitor, and Log Analytics

Kafka integrations across databases, microservices, or stream-processing systems

Strong observability and reliability practices, including monitoring, alerting, and SLOs

DevOps automation experience using tools such as Terraform, ARM templates, or PowerShell

Experience with prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and LLM evaluation frameworks

How We'll Evaluate Success

Delivery of a production-quality NL2SQL solution and data agent capabilities that meaningfully improve how users access and interact with data in Dayforce

Reliable, well-tested agent systems with strong guardrails, observability, and operational maturity

Faster and more confident delivery enabled by effective AI-assisted engineering workflows

Scalable, observable, and evolvable data agent services

Positive impact on team capability through collaboration, mentoring, and strong engineering practices

What’s in it for you

Dayforce is fueled by the diversity of our talented employees. We are an equal opportunity employer and consider and embrace ALL individuals and what makes them unique. We believe our employees should be happy and healthy, with peace of mind and a sense of fulfillment.

We encourage individuals to apply based on their passions.

Dayforce encourages personal and professional growth. We offer excellent time away from work programs, comprehensive wellness initiatives and recognition through competitive pay and benefits.

With a commitment to community impact, including volunteer days and our charity, Dayforce Cares we provide opportunities for you to thrive both in your career and personal life. Our focus is not just on your job but on supporting you to be the best version of yourself. 

About the Salary Ranges  

Please note that the salary range mentioned in this job description should serve simply as a guide. The final compensation offered may vary based on a variety of factors, including bonuses and/or incentives, or a candidate’s experience, skills, budget and location. Our company is committed to providing a fair, equitable, and competitive package that reflects the value an individual brings to the organization. 

Fraudulent Recruiting

Beware of fraudulent recruiting. Legitimate Dayforce contacts will use an @dayforce.com email address. We do not request money, checks, equipment orders, or sensitive personal data during the recruitment process. If you have been asked for any of the above, or believe you have been contacted by someone posing as a Dayforce employee, please refer to our fraudulent recruiting statement found here: https://www.dayforce.com/be-aware-of-recruiting-fraud

Dayforce actively monitors all job applications to ensure authenticity. Submissions determined to be fraudulent or misleading will be declined from the recruitment process

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