Principal Engineer Visa Sponsorship Jobs in California
Principal engineer roles in California are concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, with major employers including Google, Apple, Meta, Salesforce, and Qualcomm actively hiring at this level. These senior technical positions are among the most actively sponsored in the country, drawing candidates from across the global engineering community.
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Get Access To All JobsINTRODUCTION
Your work days are brighter here.
We’re obsessed with making hard work pay off, for our people, our customers, and the world around us. As a Fortune 500 company and a leading AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, we’re shaping the future of work so teams can reach their potential and focus on what matters most. The minute you join, you’ll feel it. Not just in the products we build, but in how we show up for each other. Our culture is rooted in integrity, empathy, and shared enthusiasm. We’re in this together, tackling big challenges with bold ideas and genuine care. We look for curious minds and courageous collaborators who bring sun-drenched optimism and drive. Whether you're building smarter solutions, supporting customers, or creating a space where everyone belongs, you’ll do meaningful work with Workmates who’ve got your back. In return, we’ll give you the trust to take risks, the tools to grow, the skills to develop and the support of a company invested in you for the long haul. So, if you want to inspire a brighter work day for everyone, including yourself, you’ve found a match in Workday, and we hope to be a match for you too.
ABOUT THE TEAM
Admin Central is building the future of how administrators work across Workday—turning a fragmented patchwork of tools and disconnected AI into a single, unified experience.
Within Admin Central, the Business Process Optimize team powers the underlying platform infrastructure. You’ll build mission-critical distributed systems, high-availability usage pipelines, and event-driven data flows across global product regions to ensure enterprise billing integrity at scale. If you're excited to build from scratch, move fast, and transform how thousands of admins work every day, come join us!
ABOUT THE ROLE
As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer on the Business Process Optimize team within Admin Central, you will lead the architecture and implementation of Workday’s next-generation AI platforms and autonomous agent frameworks. You’ll sit at the intersection of machine learning, event-driven data systems, and enterprise platform engineering—transforming cutting-edge AI research into production-ready, highly reliable systems handling tens of millions of daily requests for over 100+ Tier-0 enterprise tenants.
In this hands-on, high-impact role, you will design the ML infrastructure, multi-agent orchestration layers, and high-availability usage pipelines that power enterprise-grade decision-making, usage tracking, and billing integrity across international regions.
Your Primary Focus:
- Agentic AI & Orchestration: Design, implement, and maintain advanced agentic capabilities, including tool calling, multi-agent workflows, long-range planning, reasoning frameworks, and human-in-the-loop integrations.
- Scalable ML Infrastructure: Build secure, high-throughput REST services and event-driven data pipelines using Python, Kubernetes, and cloud-native tech. Architect multi-tenant runtimes that deliver fast, low-latency inference to millions of global users.
- MLOps & Enterprise Reliability: Establish end-to-end MLOps standards—including CI/CD automation, observability, evaluation frameworks, model monitoring, and privacy/anonymization guardrails—ensuring systems are explainable, secure, and production-resilient.
- Technical & Strategic Leadership: Partner closely with software engineers, Product Managers, Data Engineering, SRE, and Legal/Compliance stakeholders to turn ambiguous business needs into scalable technical designs and long-term data-governance strategies.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 12+ years in ML development and R&D leadership, including 8+ years with advanced ML methodologies, distributed frameworks, and cloud-based platforms — designing complex, scalable, production-grade ML systems.
- 6+ years building and hosting scalable ML services, microservices, and high-throughput data pipelines in production using Java, Go, Scala, or Python.
- 4+ years working with LLMs, generative AI, RAG pipelines, and autonomous agent frameworks for real-world enterprise applications.
OTHER QUALIFICATIONS
- Data Processing & Pipelines: Expert in high-throughput streaming (Kafka), real-time feature extraction (Spark/Flink), and distributed columnar storage (ClickHouse, Iceberg) to architect large-scale ML pipelines.
- AI/ML Expertise: Deep knowledge of deep learning, LLM orchestration, RAG, and agentic systems — applying ML algorithms and Model-Based Design (including MCP integrations and tool-use frameworks) to multi-agent coordination, intent classification, and workflow optimization.
- Data Analysis & Feature Engineering: Proven ability to lead EDA on multi-tenant agentic workflows to shape data strategy, paired with mastery of high-dimensional embeddings, vector database management, and data isolation.
- Model Lifecycle: Proven ability to lead model building, fine-tuning, and deployment of domain-specific foundation models — including Kubernetes/Docker deployment, automated CI/CD retraining, and managing drift/latency at scale.
- Technical Stack: Mastery of Python and the ML ecosystem (PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, LangSmith, LlamaIndex, NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn), with strong experience deploying production systems on PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure).
- Team Leadership: Exceptional collaboration and mentoring skills — technically leading cross-functional pods, driving sprint planning, and translating technical/governance decisions for executives.
- Education: Bachelor's in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience); Master's or PhD strongly preferred.
COMPENSATION
The annualized base salary ranges for the primary location and any additional locations are listed below. Workday pay ranges vary based on work location. As a part of the total compensation package, this role may be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission/bonus, as well as annual refresh stock grants. Recruiters can share more detail during the hiring process. Each candidate’s compensation offer will be based on multiple factors including, but not limited to, geography, experience, skills, job duties, and business need, among other things. For more information regarding Workday’s comprehensive benefits, please click here.
Primary Location: USA.CA.Pleasanton
Primary Location Base Pay Range: $228,000 USD - $342,000 USD
Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $190,600 USD - $342,000 USD
OUR APPROACH TO FLEXIBLE WORK
With Flex Work, we’re combining the best of both worlds: in-person time and remote. Our approach enables our teams to deepen connections, maintain a strong community, and do their best work. We know that flexibility can take shape in many ways, so rather than a number of required days in-office each week, we simply spend at least half (50%) of our time each quarter in the office or in the field with our customers, prospects, and partners (depending on role). This means you'll have the freedom to create a flexible schedule that caters to your business, team, and personal needs, while being intentional to make the most of time spent together. Those in our remote "home office" roles also have the opportunity to come together in our offices for important moments that matter.
Pursuant to applicable Fair Chance law, Workday will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Workday is an Equal Opportunity Employer including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.
Workday is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals during our application process, in order to perform one or more essential functions of their job, as well as regarding the use of AI tools for employment decision-making to any degree. Please see below for more details including how to request an accommodation as a qualified veteran, due to a disability or for religious reasons, or as otherwise provided under applicable law.
Workday prohibits taking adverse action against any candidate or employee for reporting a possible violation of this policy, requesting one or more work accommodations, exercising a privacy right, or cooperating in an investigation in accordance with applicable law. Any employee who retaliates against a candidate or employee for doing so may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment, to the fullest extent allowable under applicable law.
If you require a reasonable accommodation, you may email accommodations@workday.com, as far in advance as possible.
ARE YOU BEING REFERRED TO ONE OF OUR ROLES?
If so, ask your connection at Workday about our Employee Referral process!
At Workday, we value our candidates’ privacy and data security. Workday will never ask candidates to apply to jobs through websites that are not Workday Careers.
Please be aware of sites that may ask for you to input your data in connection with a job posting that appears to be from Workday but is not.
In addition, Workday will never ask candidates to pay a recruiting fee, or pay for consulting or coaching services, in order to apply for a job at Workday.
INTRODUCTION
Your work days are brighter here.
We’re obsessed with making hard work pay off, for our people, our customers, and the world around us. As a Fortune 500 company and a leading AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, we’re shaping the future of work so teams can reach their potential and focus on what matters most. The minute you join, you’ll feel it. Not just in the products we build, but in how we show up for each other. Our culture is rooted in integrity, empathy, and shared enthusiasm. We’re in this together, tackling big challenges with bold ideas and genuine care. We look for curious minds and courageous collaborators who bring sun-drenched optimism and drive. Whether you're building smarter solutions, supporting customers, or creating a space where everyone belongs, you’ll do meaningful work with Workmates who’ve got your back. In return, we’ll give you the trust to take risks, the tools to grow, the skills to develop and the support of a company invested in you for the long haul. So, if you want to inspire a brighter work day for everyone, including yourself, you’ve found a match in Workday, and we hope to be a match for you too.
ABOUT THE TEAM
Admin Central is building the future of how administrators work across Workday—turning a fragmented patchwork of tools and disconnected AI into a single, unified experience.
Within Admin Central, the Business Process Optimize team powers the underlying platform infrastructure. You’ll build mission-critical distributed systems, high-availability usage pipelines, and event-driven data flows across global product regions to ensure enterprise billing integrity at scale. If you're excited to build from scratch, move fast, and transform how thousands of admins work every day, come join us!
ABOUT THE ROLE
As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer on the Business Process Optimize team within Admin Central, you will lead the architecture and implementation of Workday’s next-generation AI platforms and autonomous agent frameworks. You’ll sit at the intersection of machine learning, event-driven data systems, and enterprise platform engineering—transforming cutting-edge AI research into production-ready, highly reliable systems handling tens of millions of daily requests for over 100+ Tier-0 enterprise tenants.
In this hands-on, high-impact role, you will design the ML infrastructure, multi-agent orchestration layers, and high-availability usage pipelines that power enterprise-grade decision-making, usage tracking, and billing integrity across international regions.
Your Primary Focus:
- Agentic AI & Orchestration: Design, implement, and maintain advanced agentic capabilities, including tool calling, multi-agent workflows, long-range planning, reasoning frameworks, and human-in-the-loop integrations.
- Scalable ML Infrastructure: Build secure, high-throughput REST services and event-driven data pipelines using Python, Kubernetes, and cloud-native tech. Architect multi-tenant runtimes that deliver fast, low-latency inference to millions of global users.
- MLOps & Enterprise Reliability: Establish end-to-end MLOps standards—including CI/CD automation, observability, evaluation frameworks, model monitoring, and privacy/anonymization guardrails—ensuring systems are explainable, secure, and production-resilient.
- Technical & Strategic Leadership: Partner closely with software engineers, Product Managers, Data Engineering, SRE, and Legal/Compliance stakeholders to turn ambiguous business needs into scalable technical designs and long-term data-governance strategies.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 12+ years in ML development and R&D leadership, including 8+ years with advanced ML methodologies, distributed frameworks, and cloud-based platforms — designing complex, scalable, production-grade ML systems.
- 6+ years building and hosting scalable ML services, microservices, and high-throughput data pipelines in production using Java, Go, Scala, or Python.
- 4+ years working with LLMs, generative AI, RAG pipelines, and autonomous agent frameworks for real-world enterprise applications.
OTHER QUALIFICATIONS
- Data Processing & Pipelines: Expert in high-throughput streaming (Kafka), real-time feature extraction (Spark/Flink), and distributed columnar storage (ClickHouse, Iceberg) to architect large-scale ML pipelines.
- AI/ML Expertise: Deep knowledge of deep learning, LLM orchestration, RAG, and agentic systems — applying ML algorithms and Model-Based Design (including MCP integrations and tool-use frameworks) to multi-agent coordination, intent classification, and workflow optimization.
- Data Analysis & Feature Engineering: Proven ability to lead EDA on multi-tenant agentic workflows to shape data strategy, paired with mastery of high-dimensional embeddings, vector database management, and data isolation.
- Model Lifecycle: Proven ability to lead model building, fine-tuning, and deployment of domain-specific foundation models — including Kubernetes/Docker deployment, automated CI/CD retraining, and managing drift/latency at scale.
- Technical Stack: Mastery of Python and the ML ecosystem (PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, LangSmith, LlamaIndex, NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn), with strong experience deploying production systems on PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure).
- Team Leadership: Exceptional collaboration and mentoring skills — technically leading cross-functional pods, driving sprint planning, and translating technical/governance decisions for executives.
- Education: Bachelor's in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience); Master's or PhD strongly preferred.
COMPENSATION
The annualized base salary ranges for the primary location and any additional locations are listed below. Workday pay ranges vary based on work location. As a part of the total compensation package, this role may be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission/bonus, as well as annual refresh stock grants. Recruiters can share more detail during the hiring process. Each candidate’s compensation offer will be based on multiple factors including, but not limited to, geography, experience, skills, job duties, and business need, among other things. For more information regarding Workday’s comprehensive benefits, please click here.
Primary Location: USA.CA.Pleasanton
Primary Location Base Pay Range: $228,000 USD - $342,000 USD
Additional US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $190,600 USD - $342,000 USD
OUR APPROACH TO FLEXIBLE WORK
With Flex Work, we’re combining the best of both worlds: in-person time and remote. Our approach enables our teams to deepen connections, maintain a strong community, and do their best work. We know that flexibility can take shape in many ways, so rather than a number of required days in-office each week, we simply spend at least half (50%) of our time each quarter in the office or in the field with our customers, prospects, and partners (depending on role). This means you'll have the freedom to create a flexible schedule that caters to your business, team, and personal needs, while being intentional to make the most of time spent together. Those in our remote "home office" roles also have the opportunity to come together in our offices for important moments that matter.
Pursuant to applicable Fair Chance law, Workday will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Workday is an Equal Opportunity Employer including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.
Workday is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals during our application process, in order to perform one or more essential functions of their job, as well as regarding the use of AI tools for employment decision-making to any degree. Please see below for more details including how to request an accommodation as a qualified veteran, due to a disability or for religious reasons, or as otherwise provided under applicable law.
Workday prohibits taking adverse action against any candidate or employee for reporting a possible violation of this policy, requesting one or more work accommodations, exercising a privacy right, or cooperating in an investigation in accordance with applicable law. Any employee who retaliates against a candidate or employee for doing so may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment, to the fullest extent allowable under applicable law.
If you require a reasonable accommodation, you may email accommodations@workday.com, as far in advance as possible.
ARE YOU BEING REFERRED TO ONE OF OUR ROLES?
If so, ask your connection at Workday about our Employee Referral process!
At Workday, we value our candidates’ privacy and data security. Workday will never ask candidates to apply to jobs through websites that are not Workday Careers.
Please be aware of sites that may ask for you to input your data in connection with a job posting that appears to be from Workday but is not.
In addition, Workday will never ask candidates to pay a recruiting fee, or pay for consulting or coaching services, in order to apply for a job at Workday.
Principal Engineer Job Roles in California
See all 6,202+ Principal Engineer Jobs in California
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Search Principal Engineer Jobs in CaliforniaPrincipal Engineer Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies sponsor visas for principal engineers in California?
Large technology employers with established immigration programs are the most consistent sponsors. Companies like Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, Nvidia, and Qualcomm regularly file H-1B visa petitions for principal engineer roles. Semiconductor firms concentrated in Silicon Valley and San Diego, along with enterprise software companies, also sponsor at this level. Smaller Series B and C startups sponsor less predictably, as the process requires dedicated legal and HR resources.
Which visa types are most common for principal engineers in California?
The H-1B is the most common visa category for principal engineers in California. Because principal engineer roles require a specific technical degree, they typically satisfy the specialty occupation standard without difficulty. Candidates with exceptional research profiles or sustained industry recognition sometimes qualify for the O-1A. Intracompany transfers from a foreign parent or subsidiary may use the L-1A or L-1B depending on whether the role is managerial or involves specialized knowledge.
Which cities in California have the most principal engineer sponsorship jobs?
The San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and San Francisco itself, has the highest concentration of principal engineer sponsorship roles in California. Los Angeles is a growing hub, particularly in aerospace, entertainment technology, and e-commerce infrastructure. San Diego is notable for semiconductor, biotech, and defense technology employers. Remote-friendly roles headquartered in California are also commonly listed under Bay Area or Los Angeles offices for sponsorship purposes.
How to find principal engineer visa sponsorship jobs in California?
Migrate Mate filters job listings specifically to roles where employers have a documented history of visa sponsorship, making it easier to focus your search on principal engineer positions in California without sorting through listings that don't support international candidates. You can filter by state and role level to surface relevant openings at companies actively hiring at the principal level across the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
Are there any California-specific considerations for principal engineers seeking visa sponsorship?
California's prevailing wage requirements under the H-1B program are set to reflect local market rates, which for principal engineer roles in high-cost metros like San Francisco and San Jose are among the highest in any U.S. state. California also has a strong university pipeline through UC Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech, and USC, which means employer immigration programs in the state are generally well-established and experienced with sponsoring senior engineering talent.
What is the prevailing wage for sponsored principal engineer jobs in California?
U.S. employers sponsoring a visa must pay at least the prevailing wage, which is what workers in the same role, area, and experience level typically earn. The Department of Labor sets this rate to make sure companies aren't hiring foreign workers simply because they'd accept lower pay than a U.S. worker. It varies by job title, location, and experience. You can look up current prevailing wage rates for any occupation and location using the OFLC Wage Search page.