Distinguished, Software Engineer -AI/ML Engineer- Walmart Connect

Walmart•Sunnyvale, CA

1d•$169,000 - $338,000

About The Position

What you'll do... About Walmart Connect: Walmart Connect is Walmart’s advertising platform, leveraging Walmart’s scale, data, and omnichannel presence to deliver impactful advertising solutions for brands and suppliers. Our mission is to help advertisers connect with Walmart’s customers in meaningful ways, driving measurable results and enhancing the shopping experience. Role Overview: As a Distinguished, Software Engineer - AI/ML Engineer- Walmart Connect , you will be a technical leader responsible for architecting, developing, and deploying advanced Gen AI and ML solutions that power Walmart’s advertising ecosystem. You will drive innovation in areas such as ad targeting, personalization, bidding optimization, attribution modeling, and campaign analytics. More specifically, you will own the end-to-end engineering & ML strategy and delivery of custom LLMs, multimodal generative models, RAG pipelines, and autonomous multi-agent systems. Your expertise will shape the next generation of Walmart’s Ads platform, working closely with product, engineering, and data science teams. This is a rare opportunity to define the technical vision for agentic retail media at enterprise scale—turning Walmart’s unmatched first-party omnichannel signals into fully autonomous, self-optimizing advertising experiences that deliver superior ROAS for brands while accelerating Walmart Connect’s revenue growth.

Requirements

Option 1: Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 6 years’ experience in software engineering or related area.
Option 2: 8 years’ experience in software engineering or related area.

Nice To Haves

PhD or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or related field.
12+ years of ML engineering experience, with at least 5+ years operating at a Principal, Staff, or Distinguished level in a high-scale tech environment
Deep hands-on expertise in training, fine-tuning, and deploying Large Language Models and Foundation Models into production.
Proven track record of designing complex systems using LLM orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex), reasoning frameworks (Chain-of-Thought, ReAct), and multi-agent architectures.
Strong background in designing highly available, low-latency distributed systems (handling 100K+ QPS) using cloud-native architectures (GCP, Azure, or AWS).
Expert-level proficiency in Python, Go, Rust, or C++, alongside modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).
Experience with scalable vector databases (Milvus, Pinecone), feature stores, and real-time streaming pipelines (Kafka, Flink).
Excellent communication and leadership skills; ability to influence technical direction and mentor teams.
Strong foundational knowledge of programmatic advertising, Real-Time Bidding (RTB), click-through rate (CTR) prediction, and dynamic creative optimization.
Experience in advertising technology, retail media, or e-commerce is highly preferred.
A track record of taking cutting-edge academic AI research and translating it into scalable, revenue-generating enterprise products.
Patents or publications in top-tier AI conferences (NeurIPS, ICML) are a strong plus.
Master’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 4 years' experience in software engineering or related area
We value candidates with a background in creating inclusive digital experiences, demonstrating knowledge in implementing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standards, assistive technologies, and integrating digital accessibility seamlessly.
The ideal candidate would have knowledge of accessibility best practices and join us as we continue to create accessible products and services following Walmart’s accessibility standards and guidelines for supporting an inclusive culture.

Responsibilities

Shape the long-term AI engineering roadmap for Walmart Ads, aligning with the org vision of becoming the definitive AI-native omnichannel RMN.
Lead the strategy for pre-training, fine-tuning, and aligning (RLHF/DPO) open-weight foundation models explicitly for the retail media domain
Architect highly scalable Retrieval-Augmented Generation pipelines that ground LLM outputs in real-time inventory, pricing, and hyper-local store data.
Architect and deploy autonomous AI agents capable of complex reasoning, tool-use, and multi-step planning. Use cases include autonomous campaign optimization, real-time budget reallocation based on live market signals, and dynamic audience discovery.
Collaborate cross-functionally with Ads Product, Data Science, and Engineering to integrate LLMs & agentic AI into core ad surfaces (Search, Display, Video, In-Store) and omnichannel measurement.
Drive inference optimization (quantization, vLLM, TensorRT) to ensure generative models are cost-efficient and meet the strict ultra-low latency requirements (sub-100ms) of programmatic ad exchanges and real-time bidding (RTB) environments.
Ensure all AI capabilities are cleanly decoupled yet tightly integrated with core ad servers, SSPs, DSPs, and yield management engines handling millions of queries per second (QPS).
Establish the frameworks for brand safety, bias mitigation, hallucination detection, and compliance with data privacy regulations (e.g., clean room integrations) within generative systems.
Champion technical excellence: conduct architecture reviews and establish best practices. Provide thought leadership through internal tech talks and design documents.
Build and grow technical talent pipelines by mentoring and attracting top AI engineering talent.
Stay at the forefront of research and industry trends in agentic AI, multimodal LLMs, and retail media (internal and external).
Act as a strategic partner to Product, Business, and Infrastructure leadership, translating complex AI research into clear, actionable product roadmaps and build-vs-buy decisions.
Represent Walmart Connect in internal and external forums, sharing technical insights and advancing Walmart’s thought leadership in ML, Gen AI and advertising technology.

Benefits

At Walmart, we offer competitive pay as well as performance-based bonus awards and other great benefits for a happier mind, body, and wallet.
Health benefits include medical, vision and dental coverage.
Financial benefits include 401(k), stock purchase and company-paid life insurance.
Paid time off benefits include PTO (including sick leave), parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting.
Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.
You will also receive PTO and/or PPTO that can be used for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes.
The amount you receive depends on your job classification and length of employment.
It will meet or exceed the requirements of paid sick leave laws, where applicable.
For information about PTO, see https://one.walmart.com/notices.
Live Better U is a Walmart-paid education benefit program for full-time and part-time associates in Walmart and Sam's Club facilities.
Programs range from high school completion to bachelor's degrees, including English Language Learning and short-form certificates.
Tuition, books, and fees are completely paid for by Walmart.
Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on your job classification and length of employment.
Benefits are subject to change and may be subject to a specific plan or program terms.
For information about benefits and eligibility, see One.Walmart.
The annual salary range for this position is $169,000.00 - $338,000.00
Additional compensation includes annual or quarterly performance bonuses.
Additional compensation for certain positions may also include : - Stock