Principal, Data Engineer

Position Summary...

What you'll do...

As a Principal Data Engineer, you are a hands-on, senior technical engineer within Walmart Global Tech, AI and Data team, responsible for developing and contributing towards high impact Global Marketplace’s enterprise data platform deliverables at a global scale. Your work directly enables sellers at Walmart, serves hundreds of millions of customers and associates, across digital and physical channels, every day. You operate at the intersection of retail scale, near real‑time intelligence, and Agentic AI, translating our long‑term platform strategy into durable business impact.

About the Team

Global Marketplace is Walmart’s third‑party commerce platform, connecting sellers to millions of customers across categories while leveraging Walmart’s scale, trust, and omni‑channel reach. Marketplace platforms enable third-party sellers, and internal teams to deliver seamless digital and physical commerce experiences, supported by Walmart Global Tech’s data, platform, and AI capabilities. The Data Engineering organization within Walmart Global Tech AI and Data team builds and operates the platforms that make this possible—enabling real‑time decision‑making, personalizing seller focused applications, and the next generation of AI‑driven and agent‑enabled systems. We build with a people‑led, tech‑empowered mindset, focused on reliability, trust, and long‑term sustainability.

What You’ll Do:

• Transform and evolve Walmart’s core data platform using Agentic AI across batch, streaming, and hybrid systems to support data powered Global Marketplace applications, analytics, operational intelligence, and AI‑native workloads.
• Develop data platforms that scale to billions of events per day, supporting both near real‑time retail decisions and deep analytical insights.
• Develop agent‑ready data, ensuring data products are discoverable, semantically rich, and optimized for LLMs, copilots, and multi‑agent workflows.
• Influence multiple teams and organizations through technical leadership and clear architectural direction—without direct authority.
• Develop fault‑tolerant, resilient systems that support mission‑critical retail and marketplace operations.
• Lead modernization of legacy data lakes and pipelines into composable, event‑driven, and agent‑aware platforms.
• Enable incremental modernization that delivers immediate value while reducing long‑term complexity and operational risk.
• Mentor Staff and Senior Engineers across Walmart Global Tech AI and Data team.

What You’ll Bring:

Enterprise & Retail‑Scale Experience

• 10–15+ years building and evolving large‑scale distributed data platforms.
• Proven experience designing systems that operate at global retail or consumer‑scale.
• Track record of collaborating and influencing across multiple teams or organizations.

Deep Data Platform Expertise

• Strong experience with cloud‑native ecosystems (GCP or Azure preferred), including BigQuery, Serverless, Pub/Sub, or equivalent.
• Expertise in batch and streaming technologies (Kafka, Spark Structured Streaming, Flink, Druid, etc.).
• Experience working with hybrid architectures that support both real‑time operations and analytical workloads.

Agentic & AI‑Ready Systems Knowledge

• Strong understanding of semantic modeling, embeddings, knowledge graphs, and vector indexing.
• Experience supporting RAG, context‑aware AI, and agent orchestration through data platform design.
• Ability to reason about schema design, latency, storage formats, and their impact on AI behavior and outcomes.

Strong Engineering Foundation

• Fluency in Python, Java, or Scala.
• Deep experience with Spark/PySpark and large‑scale SQL optimization.
• Strong systems thinking, performance tuning, and operational excellence mindset.

Influence & Communication

• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence in complex, matrixed organizations.
• Executive‑level communication skills, with the ability to connect technical strategy to business and customer impact.

About Walmart Global Tech
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.

Walmart’s culture is a competitive advantage, and it’s fostered by being together. Working together in person allows us to collaborate, align quickly and innovate with greater speed.  We use our campuses to create purposeful connection rooted in deepening understanding and investing in the development of our associates.  

Our hubs: Walmart is a global company with offices across the United States and around the world. Our global headquarters is in Bentonville, Arkansas, with primary hubs in the San Francisco Bay area and New York/New Jersey. 

Benefits:
Benefits: Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance. Other great perks include 401(k) match, stock purchase plan, paid maternity and parental leave, PTO, multiple health plans, and much more.

Equal Opportunity Employer:
Walmart, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer – By Choice. We believe we are best equipped to help our associates, customers, and the communities we serve live better when we really know them. That means understanding, respecting, and valuing unique styles, experiences, identities, ideas, and opinions – while being inclusive of all people.

The above information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed in the role. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. The full Job Description can be made available as part of the hiring process

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. For information about PTO, see https://one.walmart.com/notices. 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 :
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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 and 5 years' experience in software engineering or related field. Option 2: 7 years’ experience in software engineering or related field. Option 3: Master's degree in Computer Science and 3 years' experience in software engineering or related field.
4 years' experience in data engineering, database engineering, business intelligence, or business analytics.

Preferred Qualifications...

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

Data engineering, database engineering, business intelligence, or business analytics, ETL tools and working with large data sets in the cloud, Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field and 5 years' experience in software engineering or related field, 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...

1375 Crossman Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1114, 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.