(USA) Principal, Software Engineer

Walmart, (USA) SUNNYVALE TECH CORNERS BLDG 6 CA SUNNYVALE Home Office

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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**

What you will do

What you'll do

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.

What you'll do

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.

What you need

What you'll bring

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.

Minimum Qualifications

Outlined below are the required minimum qualifications for this position. If none are listed, there are no minimum qualifications.

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 have

Outlined below are the optional preferred qualifications for this position. If none are listed, there are no preferred qualifications.

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.

Primary Location

815 Eleventh Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-4731, United States of America

Walmart and its subsidiaries are committed to maintaining a drug-free workplace and has a no tolerance policy regarding the use of illegal drugs and alcohol on the job. This policy applies to all employees and aims to create a safe and productive work environment.

About Walmart

Imagine working in an environment where one line of code can make life easier for hundreds of millions of people. That’s what we do at Walmart Global Tech. We’re a team of software engineers, data scientists, cybersecurity expert's and service professionals within the world’s leading retailer who make an epic impact and are at the forefront of the next retail disruption. People are why we innovate, and people power our innovations. We are people-led and tech-empowered.

We train our team in the skillsets of the future and bring in experts like you to help us grow. We have roles for those chasing their first opportunity as well as those looking for the opportunity that will define their career. Here, you can kickstart a great career in tech, gain new skills and experience for virtually every industry, or leverage your expertise to innovate at scale, impact millions and reimagine the future of retail.

Flexible, hybrid work

We use a hybrid way of working with primary in office presence coupled with an optimal mix of virtual presence. We use our campuses to collaborate and be together in person, as business needs require and for

development and networking opportunities. This approach helps us make quicker decisions, remove location barriers across our global team, be more flexible in our personal lives.

(USA) Principal, Software Engineer

(USA) Principal, Software Engineer

The team

What you will do

What you'll do

What you'll do

What you need

What you'll bring

Minimum Qualifications

Nice to have

Additional compensation for certain positions may also include

Primary Location

Pay and benefits

About Walmart

Interview questions

Walmart

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