(USA) Principal, Software Engineer

Role summary

The Principal Software Engineer leads the design and delivery of scalable platform capabilities, driving cloud-native architecture and AI/ML integration across multiple teams. This role oversees the full software development lifecycle, ensuring high availability, reliability, and performance of distributed systems.

The position requires strategic technical leadership, mentorship, and collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders to align engineering efforts with business objectives. The engineer champions innovation, continuous improvement, and technical excellence while maintaining architectural standards and fostering knowledge sharing to support Walmart's long-term technology vision.

What you'll do

• Lead platform engineering efforts to deliver scalable infrastructure, reusable tooling, and advanced ML frameworks aligned with strategic roadmaps.
• Architect and implement cloud-native, distributed systems ensuring high availability, fault tolerance, and real-time data processing capabilities.
• Oversee full software development lifecycle including coding, testing, CI/CD deployment, monitoring, and incident response across multiple teams.
• Integrate AI/ML technologies into software products to enhance customer and associate experiences.
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and promote engineering best practices and innovation.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate business needs into actionable technical requirements and measurable outcomes.
• Maintain architectural documentation and drive continuous improvement initiatives.

What you'll bring

• Extensive experience in platform engineering leadership, delivering scalable infrastructure and reusable tooling aligned with strategic roadmaps.
• Proven expertise in cloud-native architecture and distributed system design ensuring high availability and fault tolerance.
• Strong technical execution skills across full software development lifecycle, including CI/CD, testing, monitoring, and incident response.
• Proficiency in AI/ML integration and building intelligent software systems using languages such as Python, Java, and C++.
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical mentorship and influence architectural decisions across teams.
• Excellent collaboration skills with cross-functional stakeholders to define requirements and measure success.
• Commitment to continuous improvement, innovation, and maintaining high standards of quality and integrity.

Minimum education and experience required

Master's degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Software Engineering, Information Technology Management, or related area and 3 years of experience in software engineering or related area; OR Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Software Engineering, Information Technology Management, or related area and 5 years of post-bachelor's progressively responsible experience in software engineering or related area.

• Skills required: Experience building highly available, high-performance, redundant, and scalable distributed systems.
• Experience documenting high-level technical design documents.
• Experience developing low-level design documents.
• Experience designing and developing high performance microservices using Java, Golang, and Scala.
• Experience implementing Rest APIs with low latency and high reliability in Golang.

• Experience building event driven systems using Kafka for increased throughput.
• Experience integrating Cassandra, DB2 databases and optimizing query performance for high-load scenarios.
• Experience optimizing performance of microservices using profiling, concurrency and caching in Golang.
• Experience refactoring monolith services into scalable microservices in Golang.

• Experience integrating Elastic Search, Logstash, and Kibana for monitoring production systems.
• Experience deploying containerized services on Kubernetes.
• Experience performing code reviews in Golang, Java, and Scala to ensure best practices and coding standards.
• Experience mentoring and guiding junior associates on engineering standards.
• Experience collaborating with DevOps teams to streamline CI/CD pipelines.

Employer will accept any amount of experience with the required skills.

Pay and benefits

At Walmart, we offer competitive pay as well as performance-based bonus awards and other great benefits for a happier mind, body, and wallet. 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. Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.

You will also receive PTO and/or PPTO that can be used for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes. The amount you receive depends on your job classification and length of employment. It will meet or exceed the requirements of paid sick leave laws, where applicable.

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.

Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on your job classification and length of employment. Benefits are subject to change and may be subject to a specific plan or program terms.

For information about benefits and eligibility, see One.Walmart.

The annual salary range for this position is $143,000.00 - $286,000.00

Additional compensation includes annual or quarterly performance bonuses.

Additional compensation for certain positions may also include

• Stock

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.

Preferred Qualifications

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

1395 Crossman Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1114, United States of America