Principal, Software Engineer

Walmart•Bentonville, AR

4d•Onsite

About The Position

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will lead the design and delivery of scalable platform capabilities, driving innovation in cloud-native architectures and AI/ML integration. This role requires strategic technical leadership across multiple teams, ensuring alignment with long-term roadmaps and business objectives. You will oversee the full software development lifecycle, promote engineering excellence, and foster collaboration to solve complex problems. By applying sound technical judgment and continuous improvement, you will contribute to building reliable and high-performance systems that meet customers' needs while advancing Walmart’s technology vision. Walmart's Advertising Technology group enables the connection between supplier brands and retail shoppers at unprecedented scale. We are a highly motivated group of engineers and data scientists, working in an agile group to solve sophisticated and high impact problems. We serve billions of ad requests every month with our high-performance ad servers. We build smart data systems that ingest, model, analyze and optimize the massive flow of data from online and store user activity and transactions. We use cutting edge machine learning, data mining and optimization algorithms on this data. Above all, we are laser focused on delivering experiences that our customers and advertisers love. This role is part of our Sponsored Search Ad Server engineering team for Backend Services and will build the next generation omni-advertising platforms to deliver performance and value at scale. A successful person in this role will own major components of the solution, drive alignment with other teams, guide architecture and technology choices within the team and across Walmart Connect.

Requirements

Bachelor's or master’s in computer science (or related field) and 10+ years of experience
Experience in AdTech / Search / ML / AI is a big plus.
Experience working with Data Science teams to implement ML models in real-time serving
Leadership experience in solutions architecture and design
8+ years of experience in building and managing large scale distributed, scalable, highly available, and fault tolerant systems.
8+ years of hands-on experience in Java or another object-oriented language, Spring, No SQL
Experience in Apache Hadoop, Map-reduce, Apache Spark, and in messaging Systems as Kafka
Exposure to data science and machine learning techniques
Strong communication and leadership skills
Exceptional analytical-reasoning and problem-solving skills
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.
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

Collaborate with stakeholders to translate business needs into actionable technical requirements and measurable outcomes.
Lead design, implementation and operation of key services for Sponsored Ad Serving, to meet strict latency and scalability requirements.
Identify scalability and performance bottlenecks in Sponsored Ad Serving through monitoring, profiling and stress testing, propose roadmaps for system optimization and enhancement, and execute against the roadmaps.
Build advanced AI/ML infrastructure to optimize model inferencing at scale.
Drive business value, advertiser / seller ROAS by applying advanced AI/ML technologies to improve shopper intent understanding, publisher/page context insights, and improve real time shopper-ad relevancy.
Stay on top of industry trends, and uplift engineering teams on best practice, code optimization, and new technologies.
Navigate through ambiguity and contribute to long-term engineering strategies.
Direct root cause analysis of business and production issues by reviewing and analyzing information (for example, issue, impact, criticality, possible root cause); interpreting the results to determine further action; directing root cause analysis to prevent future occurrence of issues

Benefits

401(k) match
stock purchase plan
paid maternity and parental leave
PTO
multiple health plans
performance-based bonus awards
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.
short-term and long-term disability
company discounts
Military Leave Pay
adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement
PTO and/or PPTO that can be used for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes.
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.