(USA) Staff, Software Engineer

Walmart•Bentonville, AR

2d•$110,000 - $220,000

About The Position

The Staff Software Engineer will help build and operate Walmart’s next-generation Agentic AI platform, including backend services, APIs, agent tooling, and user experiences that bring Generative AI to associates at enterprise scale. The role emphasizes production engineering discipline, including CI/CD pipelines, observability, and on-call operations, alongside AI expertise. The engineer is expected to own services end to end, take responsibility for what ships, and contribute to strong engineering practices through design reviews, code review, documentation, and continuous learning. The position involves resolving ambiguous problems through investigation and prototyping, then driving them to a clear scope and design and presenting recommendations to senior and Staff-level engineers. The engineer will develop AI-driven capabilities such as agent skills, tool and plugin integrations, and MCP servers, and work with Data Science on model and agent evaluation. The role also includes setting standards for AI-assisted engineering, improving distributed tracing and latency performance, mentoring engineers, and defining system contracts with Frontend and Data Science partners.

Requirements

Production experience with Python using FastAPI or a similar framework.
TypeScript/Node.js experience is expected for parts of the platform.
Experience with streaming and event-driven systems such as Kafka, and data modeling for streaming rather than batch.
Experience with cloud-native architecture, including microservices, containers, Kubernetes, and observability.
Experience owning a CI/CD pipeline and infrastructure as code, such as Terraform, for a service run in production.
Production experience with relational or NoSQL databases, including schema design and migrations; PostgreSQL is preferred.
Experience with distributed tracing, such as OpenTelemetry, and meeting latency/SLA targets including p99, with an understanding of tradeoffs.
On-call and incident ownership experience, including diagnosing and mitigating an incident and documenting it.
Strong software design and API design skills.
Experience building and shipping AI/LLM-based systems beyond basic assistant use, including agent/tool design, prompt and context engineering, evaluation, and guardrails.
Experience setting team standards for AI-assisted development.
Track record of driving ambiguous requirements to clear decisions and presenting them to senior engineers.
Ability to work with Data Science partners on metrics and evaluation.
Strong debugging, problem-solving, communication, and cross-functional coordination skills.
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or a related area and 4 years of software engineering or related experience; alternatively, 6 years of software engineering or related experience.
Use approved AI tools responsibly and follow Walmart data-handling policies.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with A2A and MCP protocols.
Experience with agent frameworks.
Frontend exposure, such as React.
Go experience.
Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Software Engineering, or a related area and 2 years of software engineering or related experience.
Knowledge of inclusive digital experiences and WCAG 2.2 AA standards, assistive technologies, and digital accessibility best practices.

Responsibilities

Investigate ambiguous problems, prototype solutions, establish scope and design, and present recommendations to senior and Staff-level engineers.
Lead design reviews focused on scalability, latency, reliability, and security; write and review ADRs and RFCs.
Build AI-driven capabilities, including agent skills, tool and plugin integrations, and MCP servers, with evaluation and tracing.
Define and maintain team standards for using AI in engineering work.
Partner with Data Science to understand agent and model quality metrics and translate them into engineering improvements.
Own services end to end, including design, coding, testing, deployment, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code.
Participate in the on-call rotation, respond to incidents, and contribute to postmortems.
Improve observability through end-to-end distributed tracing and latency SLAs across services.
Mentor engineers and raise engineering standards through reviews and documentation.
Work with Frontend and Data Science teams to define clean contracts between systems.
Verify and refine AI-generated work, ensuring its accuracy and taking accountability for shipped results.
Design AI workflows with clear review checkpoints and traceability, and use approved tools in accordance with Walmart data-handling policies.

Benefits

Medical, vision, and dental coverage.
401(k).
Stock purchase.
Company-paid life insurance.
Paid time off, including sick leave, and PTO/PPTO that may be used for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes.
Parental leave.
Family care leave.
Bereavement leave.
Jury duty leave.
Voting leave.
Short-term and long-term disability.
Company discounts.
Military Leave Pay.
Adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement.
Walmart-paid Live Better U education benefit, including tuition, books, and fees for eligible programs.
Performance-based bonus awards, annually or quarterly.
Stock may be included as additional compensation for certain positions.