Workday Digital Product Owner - Absence

About the role  As a  Workday Digital Product Owner - Absence  within our  Digital People Services  team, you'll drive the end-to-end digital product lifecycle of Time & Attendance solutions across Sanofi's global footprint, ensuring reliable, compliant platforms that directly impact tens of thousands of employees worldwide. Ready to get started?  You'll join Sanofi's Digital Delivery & Operations unit, a key enabler of our People & Culture strategy. Operating within a portfolio-based model, you'll manage diverse solutions including Workday Absence Management and a number of regional and local systems. This role sits at the critical intersection of HR operations and digital technology, where accurate time tracking and compliant absence management express our commitment to our people and legal obligations across complex, multi-country environments.    About Sanofi   Sanofi is a global biopharmaceutical company dedicated to supporting people through their health challenges, committed to chasing the miracles of science to improve people's lives. Our team across some 100 countries transforms the practice of medicine — providing life-changing treatments and life-saving vaccines to millions globally, with sustainability and social responsibility at the center of our ambitions. Our values —  Aim Higher, Act for Patients, Be Bold, and Lead Together  — guide everything we do.     Main responsibilities:  • Own product decisions  for Time & Attendance applications, including budget planning, service requests, and management across the global portfolio  • Configure and maintain  the Workday Absence Management module hands-on, including leave plans, time off plans and absence types for multiple countries  • Manage stakeholder relationships  as primary contact between HR, Legal, Payroll, and Digital teams, ensuring clear communication and effective prioritization  • Oversee vendor partnerships  with third-party time and attendance providers, managing SLAs, performance reviews, and contract negotiations  • Ensure compliance  with local working time legislation, labor laws, collective agreements, and data privacy requirements (including GDPR) across all supported countries  • Lead change management  for system upgrades, regulatory changes, and process transformations, including release notes, testing coordination, and adoption monitoring  • Drive operational excellence  through incident management, performance monitoring, and continuous improvement initiatives across integrated HR platforms    About you  • Experience:  Proven background in HR technology, time and attendance systems, or digital product management in multinational environments, with demonstrated experience managing Time & Attendance solutions at regional or global scale  • WD Pro certification: Workday Absence certification (and its prerequisite, Core HCM certification) - this is an essential requirement. Noncertified candidates that can demonstrate significant years of experience strictly in the WD Absence field will be considered. Candidates with General HCM experience and only occasional Absence configuration work will be discarded • Technical expertise:  At least 1 full-cycle Absence implementation project where the candidate served as an independent configuration consultant/subject matter expert. Strong knowledge of Workday HCM integrations and understanding of time-to-payroll data flows, across multiple countries if possible • Configuration skills: At least one year of hands-on experience as Tier 3 (L3) Support specifically within the Workday Absence domain • Stakeholder management:  Ability to engage and influence diverse stakeholders across HR, Legal, Finance, and IT in matrix organizations, with experience managing third-party vendors and SLAs  • Compliance k