People Technology Analyst, Workday PATT & Benefits

About the Team OpenAI’s People team helps us hire, support, and retain the people who will safely build and deploy artificial intelligence that benefits humanity. The People Technology team brings together our enterprise people systems and the engineers building new internal products and AI-powered tools. We work across the People organization to improve the employee experience, simplify operations, and build technology that supports OpenAI’s global growth. About the Role We’re looking for a People Technology Analyst with deep expertise in Workday Absence, Time Tracking, and Benefits. You’ll independently own configuration, ongoing support, and improvements across these areas, including benefits for our US and international employees, from day one. You’ll work closely with Benefits, People Operations, Payroll, Finance, and Engineering to translate complex requirements into reliable systems and straightforward employee experiences. You should be comfortable configuring Workday yourself, tracing issues across modules and integrations, and owning improvements from the first conversation through launch and ongoing support. As part of our combined People Technology team, you’ll also help identify where automation, AI, and custom tools can improve how we work. You’ll bring the domain expertise needed to make those solutions useful and dependable. In this role, you will: Own Workday configuration and improvements across Absence, Time Tracking, and Benefits, including the connections between leave, time worked, and benefits eligibility. Design and maintain absence plans, accruals, eligibility rules, leave processes, time entry rules, calculations, validations, and approvals for a growing global workforce. Partner with the Payroll systems owner to ensure absence, time tracking, and benefits data flows accurately into payroll. Investigate source data issues and test downstream impacts of changes in your areas. Independently own US and international benefits configuration, including benefit plans, eligibility rules, enrollment events, life events, coverage levels, and rates. Lead open enrollment systems readiness, including configuration, testing, launch, and support. Partner with technical teams and benefits vendors to maintain and troubleshoot integrations. Lead Absence, Time Tracking, and Benefits systems work for new countries and entities, policy changes, and evolving employee needs. Partner with functional owners to translate local requirements into configuration. Own projects from discovery and prioritization through configuration, testing, release, documentation, and adoption. Stay accountable for how the solution performs after launch. Partner with engineers to improve integrations and build automation or AI-assisted workflows that reduce manual work and make employee support easier. Maintain system security, data quality, reporting, and change controls. Resolve production issues and address their underlying causes. Create clear documentation and training that helps employees, managers, and People teams use our systems effectively. You might thrive in this role if you have: Deep, hands-on Workday expertise across Absence and Time Tracking , with experience designing, configuring, testing, and supporting connected workflows across both. Demonstrated experience independently owning Workday Benefits configuration for US and international programs , including open enrollment, eligibility, life events, and connections to benefits vendors. An understanding of how time, absence, and benefits data flows into payroll and other downstream systems, with the ability to test changes and troubleshoot issues with the relevant system owners. Experience translating complex policies and business requirements into maintainable system designs, including country-specific configurations. Strong Workday technical skills, including business processes, calculated fields, reporting, security, and data loads, along with the ability to troubleshoot integrations with technical partners. Ownership of systems through implementation and ongoing operations, with a record of improving reliability and the experience of the people using them. Good product judgment. You ask questions, understand the underlying problem, prioritize thoughtfully, and evaluate whether a change made things better. Clear communication and the ability to work across People, Payroll, Benefits, Finance, and Engineering. Comfort working through ambiguity, balancing urgent operational needs with longer-term improvements, and following through on details. Preferred Qualifications Global Absence, Time Tracking, or Benefits implementations and new country or entity launches. Collaboration with software engineers on internal products, integrations, or workflow automation. Practical use of AI to improve systems work, documentation, testing, or employee support. Relevant Workday certifications or Workday Pro credentials. About OpenAI OpenAI is an AI research and deployment compa