Principal, Software Engineer - AI

Wal-Mart•Bentonville, AR

42d•$110,000 - $264,000•Onsite

About The Position

Are you passionate about pioneering cutting-edge technology combining mobile, data, and AI to revolutionize Walmart's associate (employee) experiences? Do you dream of creating innovative systems and products that make a big impact to more than 2 million users across the globe? As a Walmart Distinguished Data Scientist, you will play a pivotal role in designing, developing, and implementing digital solutions that solve mission critical business problems in supporting Walmart associates. About Team: The Enterprise People Technology team supports the successful deployment and adoption of new People technology across the enterprise. As a Fortune #1 company, our work impacts millions of associates globally. We strive to continuously improve people technology and products to help managers and associates so they can focus on what matters most - supporting our customers and members. People Technology is one of the major segments of Walmart Global Tech's Enterprise Business Services, which is invested in building a compact, robust organization that includes service operations and technology solutions for Finance, People, and the Associate Digital Experience. About Walmart Global Tech Imagine working in an environment where one line of code can make life easier for hundreds of millions of people. Thats what we do at Walmart Global Tech. Were a team of software engineers, data scientists, cybersecurity experts and service professionals within the world's leading retailer who make an epic impact and are at the forefront of the next retail disruption. People are why we innovate, and people power our innovations. We are people-led and tech-empowered. We train our team in the skillsets of the future and bring in experts like you to help us grow. We have roles for those chasing their first opportunity as well as those looking for the opportunity that will define their career. Here, you can kickstart a great career in tech, gain new skills and experience for virtually every industry, or leverage your expertise to innovate at scale, impact millions and reimagine the future of retail. Walmart's culture is a competitive advantage, and it's fostered by being together. Working together in person allows us to collaborate, align quickly and innovate with greater speed. We use our campuses to create purposeful connection rooted in deepening understanding and investing in the development of our associates. Our hubs: Walmart is a global company with offices across the United States and around the world. Our global headquarters is in Bentonville, Arkansas, with primary hubs in the San Francisco Bay area and New York/New Jersey.

Requirements

Deep expertise in traditional ML techniques and frameworks, with a strong foundation in model interpretability, tuning, and real-world deployment.
Proficiency in unsupervised learning methods for organizing and deriving value from unstructured datasets.
Demonstrated experience with generative AI and retrieval-augmented architectures, including knowledge of advanced search and reranking techniques.
Solid understanding of agent-based LLM frameworks and protocols (LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, MCP, Agent Protocol), enabling you to build sophisticated multi-agent systems.
Hands-on experience fine-tuning LLMs using cutting-edge methods for improved efficiency and performance.
A strategic approach to evaluation, with a track record of building robust pipelines for assessing model performance both automatically and with human feedback.
Technical fluency across Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, and popular vector databases (Milvus, Pinecone, Qdrant), combined with experience on major cloud AI platforms and MLOps tools like MLflow, Docker, and Kubernetes.
Option 1: Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and5 years' experience in software engineering or related area.
Option 2: 7 years' experience in software engineering or related area.

Nice To Haves

Master's degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 3 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

Develop and deploy machine learning models using decision trees, random forests, and gradient boosting techniques (e.g., XGBoost), with a focus on scalability, interpretability, and hyperparameter optimization.
Apply unsupervised learning techniques such as topic modeling (LDA, BERTopic) and clustering (K-means, HDBSCAN) to extract insights from unstructured data.
Build and refine Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Conversational-Aware Generation (CAG), and Knowledge-Augmented Generation (KAG) systems, utilizing advanced chunking, hybrid retrieval, and reranking strategies.
Design and orchestrate multi-agent LLM systems using paradigms like ReAct, self-reflection, and plan & execute, integrating tool usage and agent-to-agent communication protocols.
Fine-tune and optimize large language models using methods like LoRA, QLoRA, quantization, prompt tuning, and distillation.
Develop automated and human-in-the-loop evaluation frameworks for NLP tasks such as summarization, question answering, and code generation.
Work across cloud-native AI platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP) to deploy scalable ML/AI solutions, using modern MLOps tools to streamline experimentation and production workflows.

Benefits

Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance.
Other great perks include 401(k) match, stock purchase plan, paid maternity and parental leave, PTO, multiple health plans, and much more.
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.
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.