(USA) Principal, Software Engineer

Role summary

The (USA) Principal, Software Engineer leads the design and delivery of scalable platform capabilities, including cloud-native architectures and AI-enhanced applications. This role drives the full software development lifecycle across multiple teams, ensuring high availability, reliability, and performance.

The position requires strategic technical leadership, mentorship, and collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders to align engineering efforts with business goals. The Principal Engineer champions innovation, continuous improvement, and operational excellence while maintaining architectural integrity and delivering solutions that serve millions of customers and associates effectively.

What you'll do

• Design, build, test, and deploy highly scalable solutions impacting millions of customers.
• Develop and optimize Storm/Spark pipelines, APIs, and distributed architectures handling TB/PB-scale datasets.
• Build high-performance, resilient services capable of processing millions of requests perday.
• Provide technical leadership and engineering best practices, driving adoption of modern technologies and open-source solutions.
• Partner with Product, Business, and Engineering teams to define priorities, conduct POCs, and deliver scalable features.
• Troubleshoot production and business issues, perform RCA, and implement preventive solutions.
• Ensure software quality, security, scalability, and reliability through rigorous development and testing practices.
• Collaborate teams to establish best practices, documentation, and client requirements.
• Mentor and coach engineers, promoting strong engineering practices.

What you'll bring

• Extensive experience in platform engineering leadership, delivering scalable, cloud-native architectures and reusable tooling.
• Strong computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, design patterns
• Experience in managing Elasticsearch clusters, including indexing, querying, and performance tuning.
• Working knowledge of SQL /No-SQL and database technologies (Cassandra, Big Query, Data Bricks, Cosmos, Druid, etc)
• Hands on experience in building Micro-services, ability to build REST services using Java, Spring Boot.
• Experience in leading teams and delivering large scale distributed systems and event-driven architectures.
• Experience on Cloud Architecture, Micro-services Architecture and container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, etc.)
• Develop high performance and scalable solutions that extract, transform, and load Spark/big data.

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

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