Abstract. Exascale computers will offer transformative capabilities to combine data-driven and learning-based approaches with traditional simulation applications to accelerate scientific discovery and insight. These software combinations and integrations, however, are difficult to achieve due to challenges of coordination and deployment of heterogeneous software components on diverse and massive platforms. We present the ExaWorks project, which can address many of these challenges: ExaWorks is leading a co-design process to create a workflow Software Development Toolkit (SDK) consisting of a wide range of workflow management tools that can be composed and interoperate through common interfaces. We describe the initial set of tools and interfaces supported by the SDK, efforts to make them easier to apply to complex science challenges, and examples of their application to exemplar cases. Furthermore, we discuss how our project is working with the workflows community, large computing facilities as well as HPC platform vendors to sustainably address the requirements of workflows at the exascale.