Staff, Software Engineer
About The Position
As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll be a technical leader who defines the direction for and evolves the backend micro-services, data pipelines, and ML-serving infrastructure that power search at scale. You'll lead a team of 6–10 engineers, set technical vision for critical systems, navigate complex cross-functional initiatives, and drive the quality bar. You'll spend your days writing and reviewing code, leading design discussions, and making architectural decisions that shape the next-generation of Walmart Search. We're in an active phase of platform modernization, redesigning and refactoring core systems. If you want to build, not just maintain, this is the time to join. The eCommerce Search team owns the end-to-end stack powering product search and discovery across Walmart's global eCommerce channels. backed by micro-services, large-scale data/feature pipelines, search engines, and ML-serving infrastructure. We handle millions of queries daily, your work will shape how millions of customers find products. Our systems tackle: Query & Intent Understanding - product type classification, intent recognition, and sequence tagging (NLP and deep learning) Autocomplete — real-time query suggestions at low-latency Retrieval — Complex query construction, faceted navigation, semantic and lexical retrieval Ranking — multi-phase ML models (LTR/Neural) optimizing for customer satisfaction Data & Feature Pipelines — feeding search indices, feature stores, and analytics platforms.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience designing and shipping production code in large-scale distributed systems — including RESTful API design, fault-tolerance, and horizontal scaling.
- Deep expertise in backend development (Java and Spring Boot a plus) with strong object-oriented design fundamentals.
- Hands-on experience building data/feature pipelines using streaming/batch techniques — with proficiency in technologies similar to Spark, Kafka, Hive, GCP, and Cassandra.
- Track record technically leading teams, setting architectural direction, mentoring, and raising quality bar through code reviews.
- Strong communication skills — creating clarity from ambiguity, articulating technical trade-offs to both engineering and non-technical stakeholders, and influencing across teams.
- Familiarity with ML model integration and machine learning ecosystem.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 8 years’ experience in software engineering or related area.
- Master'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.
- 10 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 2 years' experience in software engineering or related area
- 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
- Own technical direction for search micro-services —Core Orchestration & Retrieval, Query-Understanding, Autocomplete, Facet-Navigation, and more.
- Design, build and optimize high-throughput, low-latency services, applying best practices around distributed systems, fault-tolerance, and concurrency
- Architect complex query patterns with search engines to power relevance.
- Design data and feature pipelines within the search ecosystem
- Lead discovery and design for medium-to-large initiatives — partnering with product, data science to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions
- Drive proof-of-concepts, and validate ideas through prototypes.
- Run A/B experiments; measuring impact on search quality and business metrics
- Mentor engineers and foster excellence.
- Collaborate with data scientists to productionize ML Models.
- Own production reliability — observability, on-call, RCA's.
Benefits
- Competitive pay
- Performance-based bonus awards
- Medical coverage
- Vision coverage
- Dental coverage
- 401(k)
- Stock purchase
- Company-paid life insurance
- PTO (including sick leave)
- Parental leave
- Family care leave
- Bereavement
- Jury duty
- Voting leave
- Short-term disability
- 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 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.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
