(USA) Principal, Software Engineer
About The Position
Walmart is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to lead the design and evolution of large-scale data pipeline infrastructure, delivering scalable, cloud-native data solutions that power search and personalization across Walmart's e-commerce platform. This role owns the full data engineering lifecycle — from ingestion and transformation to feature/dataset delivery — ensuring high availability, data quality, and fault tolerance at scale. The position requires strategic technical leadership, mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration to align data engineering efforts with business and ML objectives. The successful candidate will champion innovation, set data architecture standards, and drive continuous improvement while upholding Walmart's commitment to integrity and operational excellence. About the team: The team owns the data pipeline framework supporting Search and Personalization at Walmart. They build and maintain systems that ingest user interaction signals, catalog data, and other key sources, transforming them into high-quality features and datasets. These datasets power the machine learning models that drive search relevance and personalized shopping experiences at scale. The team builds robust, scalable solutions using modern data engineering and cloud-native architecture, with collaboration and technical excellence central to delivering impactful results. Immigration Sponsorship support will NOT be available for this position
Requirements
- Extensive experience leading large-scale data engineering initiatives, including distributed data processing, data modeling, and cloud-native data platforms.
- Proven expertise with big data technologies (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Hadoop) and data pipeline orchestration tools (e.g., Airflow).
- Strong programming skills in Python, Java, or Scala, with experience building production-grade ETL/ELT and streaming pipelines.
- Deep understanding of data warehousing, feature engineering, and data infrastructure supporting ML/AI systems.
- Experience with cloud platforms (Azure, GCP, or AWS) and CI/CD practices for data systems.
- Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and influence data architecture decisions across teams.
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills with cross-functional and ML stakeholders.
- Commitment to data quality, continuous improvement, and engineering excellence.
- 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.
- OR 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.
- 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.
- 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 architecture and delivery of scalable, cloud-native data pipelines and reusable data infrastructure aligned to strategic roadmaps.
- Own the end-to-end data engineering lifecycle: ingestion, transformation, orchestration, testing, deployment, and monitoring of large-scale distributed data systems.
- Design and build high-throughput, low-latency pipelines (batch and streaming) that produce ML-ready features and datasets for search and personalization models.
- Provide technical leadership and mentorship across data engineering teams, promoting best practices in data modeling, pipeline design, and architectural consistency.
- Partner with ML, search, and product stakeholders to translate business and model requirements into scalable data solutions and measurable success metrics.
- Ensure data quality, lineage, and reliability through observability, validation frameworks, and SLA ownership across pipelines.
- Drive continuous improvement through innovation, knowledge sharing, and adoption of emerging data engineering technologies.
Benefits
- Incentive awards for performance
- Best-in-class benefits
- Maternity and parental leave
- PTO
- Health benefits
- Medical coverage
- Vision coverage
- Dental coverage
- 401(k)
- Stock purchase
- 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.
- Walmart-paid education benefit program (Live better U) for full-time and part-time associates
- Tuition, books, and fees are completely paid for by Walmart for Live better U program.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
