Quick Facts
Workday internship · at a glance
Roles open and close throughout the year. Check Workday's careers portal for what is live today, and apply in the first week a role posts.
Before you applyWould your profile get you in?6 questions, under a minute. Compared with real interns who landed similar roles.Check my oddsAlso in this guide
Put real project work on your résumé, with the Wayfair AI Agent Engineering Externship or the TruBridge Healthcare Data Analytics Externship.
Explore all externships →All quick facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Where to apply | Workday Early Career portal. Set a job alert so you catch week one |
| Application window (2027–28) | Engineering and tech: not posted as of October 2, 2026 (prior cycle opened in August). Sales Development Intern (Atlanta, May 24 to August 13, 2027) open since September 10, 2026. Rolling closures in prior cycle began late November, final deadline around December 15 |
| Rolling? | Yes, confirmed. Recruiters begin reviewing applications immediately upon opening and interview rolling; apply within the first 2 weeks for maximum visibility |
| Eligibility | Enrolled in a bachelor's or master's program, junior or above, graduating no earlier than December of the year after the internship. Minimum 3.0 GPA (3.3+ preferred for PM) |
| Duration | 12 weeks, full-time (40 hours/week), late May or early June through August |
| Compensation | $48 to $75/hr depending on role, level, and location. Undergrads $48 to $58/hr; graduates $58 to $68/hr; ML and AI tracks up to $75/hr. Plus $2,000 to $2,500/month housing stipend, medical, dental, vision, and 401(k) |
| Visa sponsorship | F-1 CPT supported for international students in the US. H-1B sponsorship available for full-time conversion after internship |
| Locations | Pleasanton CA (HQ), Boulder CO, Atlanta GA, Mason OH, McLean VA, Dublin Ireland, Vancouver Canada |
| # Programs | 9 tracks: SDE, Product Management, Data Science, UX Design, Sales, Finance, HR, Consulting, Marketing |
Last updated: October 2026
Workday hires roughly 300 to 400 interns a year across engineering, product, data science, and business functions, and it fills those seats on a rolling basis. That's the fact that decides your odds. For the 2027–2028 cycle (you apply during 2026, you intern in summer 2027), most technical roles were expected to open in early to mid-August 2026 based on the prior cycle, but as of October 2, 2026 the only live summer 2027 intern posting on Workday's early career board is a Sales Development Intern in Atlanta. Technical roles close by mid-December or whenever positions fill once they post. So the calendar, not just your resume, is the filter.
What Is a Workday Internship?
A Workday internship is a paid, full-time placement, 12 weeks in the US, that puts students on real teams building Workday's cloud ERP and HCM platform. The company hires roughly 300 to 400 interns annually across nine tracks, with about 60 percent in engineering. And the reviews hold up: 5.0 out of 5 on Glassdoor across 21 intern reviews, with mentions of strong pay, complimentary housing, and a supportive culture. Workday has earned Glassdoor Best Places to Work recognition in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2025, and ranked number 4 on Fortune's 100 Best Companies list in 2019. So the brand is real, and a class this size is filled one rolling decision at a time.
When Do Workday Internship Applications Open for 2027–2028?
Workday's calendar is predictable even without the exact 2027 dates. Technical roles cluster in the late summer to fall window: listings appeared in early to mid-August in the prior cycle (the summer 2027 technical postings had not appeared by October 2, 2026), with rolling closures beginning late November and a final deadline around December 15, 2026. The previous cycle (Summer 2026) followed the same pattern with apps opening August 2025. So for summer 2027 you apply in fall 2026, roughly 9 to 11 months ahead. But the date that matters is when you submit, because rolling review rewards week one.
The summer 2027 technical postings have not appeared yet, later than the August opening of the prior cycle. The first summer 2027 intern posting is live: Sales Development Intern in Atlanta, posted September 10, 2026. Check the early career board weekly. This is the build window: your resume when a posting opens decides whether rolling review reaches you.
Most SDE and tech roles opened in this window last cycle. This cycle they had not posted by October 2, 2026, so check weekly. Review is rolling from the moment a posting goes live, so the first 2 weeks meet the most open seats. Get a referral before applying for 5 to 8x higher interview rates.
Standard review period continues. HackerRank OAs go out within 1 to 2 weeks of application. Rolling closures begin late November as positions fill.
The interview funnel: recruiter phone screen, technical coding interview, behavioral round, and hiring manager discussion. Total end-to-end timeline is 5 to 7 weeks. Offers land within 1 to 2 weeks of the final round.
12 weeks, full-time, late May or early June through August. Perform well and a return offer is on the table: 70 to 75 percent of eligible interns convert to full-time with Year 1 TC of $120K to $160K.
How to read this page: our dates come from tracking previous recruiting cycles and daily posting data. Treat them as informed estimates based on historical patterns, not confirmed dates. The company's official careers page is always the most current source. If a role is posted there, go by that, even if this page suggests the window hasn't opened yet.
Why You Must Apply the Week Applications Open
Rolling is not a detail, it's the whole game. Recruiters begin reviewing applications immediately upon opening and conduct interviews on a rolling basis. Candidates applying in December face dramatically smaller remaining position pools. Employee referrals increase interview invitation rates 5 to 8x, and the company uses its own ATS (Workday HCM) for all hiring, so referrals significantly bypass automated filters. How fast does a seat disappear? Once a role has been live a few weeks, early OAs are out and interviews are scheduled, so late applications land in a smaller pool. So secure a referral, set an alert, and apply within the first 2 weeks.
Which Workday Internship Programs Should You Target?
Workday runs 9 distinct intern tracks, from software engineering to consulting. Which one should you target? The honest answer is the track whose skills you can already evidence, because every round interviews you against that role's job description and Workday's core values of collaboration, customer empathy, and adaptability.
| Program | Focus | Duration | Key skills |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software Development Engineer Intern | Build Workday's cloud ERP and HCM platform using Java, Scala, Python; exposure to proprietary Object Management Server architecture | 12 weeks | Java / Python, data structures, OO design, Spring Boot |
| Product Management Intern | Enterprise product features with cross-functional teams; highly competitive at roughly 15% of cohort | 12 weeks | Technical background, 3.3+ GPA preferred, analytical thinking |
| Data Science Intern | Applied ML and analytics; Python and SQL-heavy exploratory data analysis and feature engineering | 12 weeks | Python, SQL, statistics, ML fundamentals |
| UX Design Intern | User experience research and design for enterprise applications; about 10% of cohort | 12 weeks | UX research, prototyping, design thinking |
| Generation Workday (New Grad) | 12-month post-graduation program; permanent full-time from day one; structured mentorship with buddy, mentor, and career sponsor | 12 months | Role-specific; base $115K to $135K |
| Workday x CodePath Partnership | Pipeline program for underrepresented students; technical training and mentorship leading to internship opportunities | Varies | CodePath coursework, collaborative projects |
See every open track on the official early career page. Engineering takes roughly 60 percent of the cohort, so software roles have the most seats, but they also draw the most applicants.
What Are the Eligibility Requirements?
Workday's requirements are consistent across most intern postings:
• Enrollment: currently enrolled in an accredited bachelor's or master's program. Must be a junior or above, returning to school after the internship.
• Majors: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Data Science, Information Systems, Business Administration, HCI, Statistics, Mathematics, or related fields.
• Graduation window: no earlier than December of the year following the internship (e.g., December 2028 for Summer 2027).
• Work authorization: F-1 CPT supported for international students studying in the US. H-1B sponsorship available for full-time conversion after internship.
Does Workday Have a GPA Cutoff?
Yes, a stated minimum 3.0 GPA on a 4.0 scale. Product Management roles prefer 3.3 or higher. But the 3.0 is a screening threshold, not the whole story. Strong projects, prior internships, and a technical portfolio can compensate for a GPA near the line. And remember: 60 percent of the cohort is engineering, where the OA and technical interview gate you far more than a tenth of a GPA point does.
Profile Match · Extern Data
Could You Get In at Workday? Compare Your Profile
Based on 403 software engineering interns who started their first software internship between 2024 and 2026 (public LinkedIn profiles, aggregated). Six questions, under a minute.
Which summer are you applying for?
Recruiting timelines differ by class year, so we compare you with the right group.
Which group is your school closest to?
Firms recruit on campus in tiers. We match you against admits from schools like yours.
Is your major computer science, software engineering, data science or electrical engineering?
Almost every software intern in our data studied one of these. Other majors get in, but the coursework has to show elsewhere.
How many internships, externships or research positions have you held so far?
Count anything with a real employer, mentor or principal investigator attached. Retail and food service do not count.
Has any of that experience been tech-related?
Software, data, IT, engineering or a research lab. Any size of company counts.
Do you have at least one project on your resume or LinkedIn?
Personal, class, hackathon or open-source projects all count.
Aggregated from public LinkedIn profiles of people who held the internship. No individual profile is shown. Read the cross-industry study of 2,500+ intern profiles.
What Skills Does Workday Look For, and How Do You Build Them?
Read across actual Workday intern JDs for Summer 2026, covering SDE, Data Science, and Product Management roles, and the pattern holds. Object-oriented programming and Java or Python proficiency appear across all technical tracks, data structures and algorithms are required for engineering, SQL and GitHub show up in data roles, and communication and collaboration are universal. But the skill list only tells half the story. Workday weights behavioral and cultural fit highly, so 'collaboration, adaptability, and customer empathy' aren't optional checkboxes. Bring the coding, then wrap every story in those core values.
What Workday looks for in interns
Skills across 6 Workday intern & analyst job descriptions · 2025–26 cycle Workday intern JDs, projecting 2027–2028
Method: full-text analysis of six Workday intern job descriptions (three SDE, one Data Science, one Product Management, one UX) from the 2025–26 cycle. Prior-cycle basis; Workday's core-values behavioral assessment is evaluated in interviews rather than listed as JD qualifications, so it sits alongside this chart, not inside it.
How Is Demand for Software Engineering Interns Moving Right Now?
Software engineer intern postings · Sep vs Aug 2026
vs 790 in August
For Workday applicants: Software engineer intern hiring picked up sharply in September; apply within the first week a role posts, while the most seats are open.
Daily US job-posting counts, Sep 1–30 vs Aug 1–31, 2026. Covers under half of US postings; shows direction, not market size.
Build These Skills Before You Apply
And every skill in that chart maps to a remote Externship where you finish a real project before a role opens.
| Skill (from real JDs) | JD evidence | Externship that builds it |
|---|---|---|
| Programming, data structures & OO design | SDE JDs: "object-oriented programming/design," "data structures and algorithms," "CS fundamentals with practical coding application" | Wayfair AI Agent Engineering |
| Data analysis, SQL & metrics-driven decisions | Data Science JD: "proficiency in Python," "basic understanding of SQL," "experience with GitHub" | TruBridge Healthcare Data Analytics |
| Business-facing communication & collaboration | PM JD: "analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills," "self-starter with multiple project management experience" | Wayfair AI Agent Engineering |
How close is the overlap? The Wayfair project is agent-engineering work that yields the build-and-explain evidence Workday's technical and behavioral rounds probe for, and the TruBridge project ends on the 'dive deep into data' story a collaboration-focused interview wants.
What Is the Workday Application and Interview Process Like?
Workday's funnel runs four stages for engineering interns, with a total end-to-end timeline of 5 to 7 weeks:
1. Apply on the Workday Early Career portal. Submit within the first 2 weeks of a posting for maximum visibility. Secure an employee referral beforehand for 5 to 8x higher interview rates.
2. Online Assessment (OA), 60 to 90 minutes. HackerRank-based, 2 to 3 coding problems at LeetCode Easy to Medium level. Topics: arrays, string manipulation, hash tables, basic tree traversal, sliding window, and OOP. Must score 80 to 100 percent to advance.
3. Recruiter phone screen, 30 minutes. Background, motivation, 'Why Workday?', and basic behavioral questions.
4. Technical coding interview, 45 to 60 minutes. Live coding with a senior Workday engineer via shared editor. LeetCode Easy to Medium, OOP, and DBMS concepts. Then a behavioral interview (45 minutes, STAR format) covering collaboration, adaptability, and customer empathy, plus a hiring manager round (30 to 45 minutes) for final team fit.
5. Offer. Extended within 1 to 2 weeks of the final round.
So the two skills to drill are clear: OOP and data-structures fluency for the OA and coding rounds (aim for 50 to 75 LeetCode problems focused on Easy to Medium), and four to six STAR stories mapping to collaboration, adaptability, and customer empathy. Workday weights behavioral and cultural fit more heavily than FAANG, so rehearse those stories out loud.
What Students on Reddit Say
Three community findings show the landscape from the inside, all paraphrased.
Workday's OA for software dev interns is fairly standard: expect LeetCode easy-to-medium problems with a focus on arrays, strings, and basic data structures. Time management matters more than trick questions here.
Workday interns consistently praise the mentorship and team culture. You get real project ownership, the tech stack is modern, and most teams genuinely invest in helping interns learn rather than just assigning grunt work.
Workday stands out for work-life balance compared to more intense options. The culture is collaborative and low-stress, which makes it a strong pick if you want to build skills without burning out over the summer.
How Do You Stand Out in a Cohort of 300?
Three moves, all before a role opens. First, secure a referral and apply in week one: rolling review plus a referral that bypasses automated ATS filters means timing and connections beat spray-and-pray. Second, clear the OA on purpose by drilling 50 to 75 LeetCode problems at Easy to Medium level in Java or Python, because HackerRank requires 80 to 100 percent to advance. Third, bring STAR stories backed by real artifacts for collaboration, adaptability, and customer empathy, because Workday weights behavioral and cultural fit more heavily than most tech companies. And remember: 70 to 75 percent of eligible interns get return offers, so interview like the full-time seat is on the table.
What Other Companies Should You Consider?
Workday isn't the only enterprise software company hiring interns on a fall-rolling calendar. If you're building a tech-internship list, these are the obvious neighbors:
- SalesforceCRM giant with a comparable enterprise SaaS intern programGuide →
- Oracledatabase and cloud rival; large intern class across engineering and businessGuide →
- Intuitfintech and enterprise software; strong intern culture and conversion ratesGuide →
- IBMlegacy enterprise tech with AI (Watson) and cloud focusGuide →
- ServiceNowfast-growing cloud workflow platform; similar HCM and enterprise marketGuide →
Our tech internships summer 2027 guide maps the whole landscape, timeline by timeline.
FAQ
When should I apply for a Workday Summer 2027 internship?
The prior cycle opened in August, but as of October 2, 2026 only the Sales Development Intern (Atlanta) is posted for summer 2027; engineering and tech roles have not appeared yet. Apply within the first 2 weeks after your target role posts for maximum visibility. Rolling admissions means positions close as they fill, and candidates applying near the December deadline face dramatically smaller pools.
Does Workday require a minimum GPA?
Yes, a minimum 3.0 GPA on a 4.0 scale. Product Management roles prefer 3.3 or higher. Strong projects and prior experience can compensate for a GPA near the threshold.
Does Workday sponsor visas for interns?
Yes, F-1 CPT is supported for international students studying in the US. H-1B sponsorship is available for full-time conversion after internship.
What is the internship compensation?
$48 to $75 per hour depending on role, level, and location. Undergrads average $48 to $58 per hour; graduate students $58 to $68 per hour; ML and AI specialized tracks up to $75 per hour. Plus $2,000 to $2,500 per month housing stipend (or corporate housing), medical, dental, vision, and 401(k) access.
How long is a Workday internship?
12 weeks, typically late May or early June through August. Full-time, 40 hours per week. The work model is hybrid with a culture described as collaborative and supportive, with 40 to 45 hour work weeks.
Where are Workday internships located?
Primary US hubs are Pleasanton CA (HQ), Boulder CO, Atlanta GA, and Mason OH. Additional US locations include McLean VA and San Jose CA. International locations include Dublin, Ireland and Vancouver, Canada. The company has 70-plus offices across roughly 30 countries.
What does the interview process look like?
Typically 4 stages: online assessment (HackerRank, 2 to 3 problems, 60 to 90 minutes), recruiter phone screen (30 minutes), technical coding interview (45 to 60 minutes with a senior engineer), and behavioral plus hiring manager round (30 to 45 minutes). Total timeline: 5 to 7 weeks. Difficulty is moderate, emphasizing OOP and behavioral fit alongside algorithms.
What is the return offer rate?
Approximately 70 to 75 percent of eligible interns receive full-time return offers. Full-time Year 1 total compensation is $120K to $160K. The Generation Workday new grad program has a 12-month retention rate exceeding 92 percent.
Workday's cohort is selective at under 8 percent acceptance for technical roles, but every seat is won one rolling decision at a time. Spend the runway building proof: a remote Externship turns 'interested in Workday' into a finished project you can point at.
About the Author
Bifei Wang has spent 17 years focused on human flow and the growth of young professionals, spanning international education, career training and coaching, and recruitment process outsourcing. Over 7 years at Extern, he has had one-on-one sessions with thousands of students exploring careers in consulting, finance, tech, marketing, and data, giving him a firsthand view of how the job market has shifted for early-career professionals and what it actually takes to break in.
