(USA) Principal, Software Engineer

Walmart • Sunnyvale, CA

8d • $143,000 - $286,000 • Onsite

About The Position

As a Principal Software Engineer at Walmart, you will lead the design and delivery of scalable platform capabilities, driving innovation in cloud native architectures and AI/ML integration. This role requires overseeing the full software development lifecycle across multiple teams, ensuring high availability, reliability, and performance of distributed systems. You will provide strategic technical leadership, mentor engineering teams, and collaborate with cross functional partners to translate complex business needs into effective technical solutions. Your expertise will support Walmart’s long-term platform evolution and operational excellence in serving millions of customers and associates.

The mGPS/Compass team drives innovation in Walmart’s in-store technology by transforming indoor positioning data into precise routing solutions that enhance operational efficiency. This team addresses complex technical challenges to achieve meter-level accuracy and real time path generation, significantly improving order accuracy and saving millions of associate hours annually. Engineers collaborate on advanced algorithms and system designs, delivering impactful business results with immediate operational feedback. The team operates in a dynamic environment, applying cloud-native architecture and AI integration to develop scalable, reliable solutions that support Walmart’s commitment to operational excellence and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• 10+ years (Staff) building and operating production distributed systems.
• Deep Java (Spring Boot 3.x, Java 17/21), REST API design, and relational data (PostgreSQL, JPA).
• Strong TypeScript/Node.js and React experience, server-side rendering/SPA tradeoffs.
• Event streaming with Kafka (producers/consumers, partitioning, DLQ/retry, idempotency).
• Data engineering fundamentals: BigQuery/SQL, Airflow, Spark/Dataproc-style batch pipelines.
• Cloud-native delivery: Kubernetes, CI/CD, canary/progressive delivery, secrets management, observability (metrics, tracing, alerting).
• Proven record of leading architecture across teams, writing ADRs, and mentoring engineers.
• Experience with multi-region active/active and DR design
• Strong testing mindset with unit/functional/integration/e2e pyramid, contract and load testing.
• hands-on mobile SDK experience: Kotlin/Android (Gradle, Hilt/DI, Room, coroutines) and/or Swift/iOS (Combine, SPM/CocoaPods binary distribution), including public API/versioning discipline.
• search/spatial stores (OpenSearch/Elasticsearch), distributed caching (memcache/CDN invalidation).
• experience owning change management / CRQ-governed releases.
• Option 1: Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 5 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

• Lead the planned decomposition of a large controller-centric Spring Boot service into well-bounded domain services, with a safe, incremental migration plan.
• Lead platform engineering efforts by delivering scalable infrastructure, reusable tooling, and cloud-native architectures aligned with strategic roadmaps.
• Drive full software development lifecycle management, including coding, testing, deployment, monitoring, and incident response across multiple teams.
• Architect and implement AI-enhanced applications and intelligent systems supporting millions of users with real-time data processing capabilities.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship, influencing architectural decisions.
• Collaborate with cross functional stakeholders to translate business needs into actionable technical requirements and measurable success metrics.
• Ensure technical ownership by maintaining quality standards, resolving issues, and driving project completion.
• Foster continuous improvement by integrating feedback, adopting new technologies, and enhancing processes and tools.
• Own architecture for the Compass platform API design, service boundaries, caching, data stores, and resilience (multi-region active/active + DR).
• Design and evolve multi-tenant capabilities (tenant-aware config, maps and APIs) for new chains and formats.
• Build and review backend (Java), web (React/TypeScript/Node), and mobile SDK (Kotlin, Swift) code, set standards, mentor engineers, raise testing maturity.
• Drive scale and performance work like Kafka partitioning/throughput, API latency, cache strategy, data-pipeline cost (GCP BQ optimizations).
• Partner with product, vendors (positioning technology), and partner-app teams (mobile apps, supplier and associate tools) on SDK contracts, SLAs, rollout plans and incident response.
• Improve operational excellence by enhancing observability, alerting, canary deployments, runbooks, change-management discipline, on-call health.

Benefits

• 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, parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. 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.
• Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.
• Live Better U is a company 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.
• Additional compensation includes annual or quarterly performance bonuses.
• Additional compensation for certain positions may also include Regional Pay Zone (RPZ) (based on location).
• At Sam's Club, we offer competitive pay as well as performance-based bonus awards and other great benefits for a happier mind, body, and wallet!

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal