Principal, Software Engineer

As a Principal Full-Stack Engineer on the mGPS/Compass team, you will lead the design and delivery of the Java services and web experiences that power Walmart's in-store positioning, mapping, and routing platform. You will set technical direction across backend and front end, with a strong focus on TypeScript and React, and own the quality, reliability, and performance of what we ship. You will mentor engineers and partner with product, vendors, and partner-app teams to turn complex needs into effective technical solutions that serve millions of customers and associates.

About the team: The mGPS/Compass team builds Walmart's in-store positioning, mapping, and routing platform. We help customers, associates, Spark shoppers, and partner apps find items faster, navigate stores with confidence, and complete orders accurately. Our work turns indoor positioning data into meter-level location and real-time routing across thousands of stores, saving millions of hours every year. We own the full stack behind the experience. That includes the blue dot, real-time path generation, and proximity-based actions that guide users to the right item. It also includes store map generation and the item and aisle location data that connects products to places. On the client side, we ship native Android and iOS SDKs and a React Native SDK used across customer, associate, and partner apps. Behind them, our core platform services and multi-tenant capabilities serve Walmart and Sam's Club and extend to new chains and formats. Our data pipelines move events through streaming and batch processing into BigQuery, so we can measure positioning quality and operational impact with privacy and compliance built in. Engineers here work from mobile SDKs and positioning signals through backend services to the analytics that prove the impact, and they see results in stores quickly. We run a multi-cloud environment on Azure and GCP with multi-region resilience and progressive delivery, and we partner closely with product, positioning vendors, and partner-app teams on SDK contracts, rollouts, and incident response. We value ownership, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement.

What you'll do:

• Own the front-end architecture for our web tools and map experiences, including the admin application and the in-store map interface, with a focus on performance, accessibility, and maintainability.
• Build and review code across Java backend services, React/TypeScript front ends, and the SDK integration layer, and set coding and testing standards.
• Own architecture for the Compass platform API design, service boundaries, caching, data stores, and resilience (multi-region active/active + DR).
• Lead platform engineering efforts by delivering scalable infrastructure, reusable tooling, and cloud-native architectures aligned with strategic roadmaps.
• Design and evolve multi-tenant capabilities (tenant-aware config, maps and APIs) for new chains and formats.
• Build and review backend (Java), web (React/TypeScript/Node), and mobile SDK (Kotlin, Swift) code, set standards, mentor engineers, raise testing maturity.
• Drive scale and performance work like Kafka partitioning/throughput, API latency, cache strategy, data-pipeline cost (GCP BQ optimizations)
• Partner with product, vendors (positioning technology), and partner-app teams (mobile apps, supplier and associate tools) on SDK contracts, SLAs, rollout plans and incident response.
• Improve operational excellence by enhancing observability, alerting, canary deployments, runbooks, change-management discipline, on-call health.

What you'll bring:

• Front-end engineering: deep experience with TypeScript and React (state management, performance, accessibility, testing), including Node.js and trade-offs between server-side rendering and single-page apps.
• Backend engineering: strong Java (Spring Boot 3.x, Java 17/21), REST API design, and relational data (PostgreSQL, JPA).
• Technical leadership: a record of leading architecture across teams, writing design docs and ADRs, and mentoring engineers at principal level.
• Event streaming with Kafka (producers/consumers, partitioning, DLQ/retry, idempotency).
• Exposure with Data engineering fundamentals: Big Query/SQL, Airflow, Spark/Datapost-style batch pipelines.
• Experience with cloud-native delivery: Kubernetes, CI/CD, canary/progressive delivery, secrets management, observability (metrics, tracing, alerting).
• Demonstrated ability to apply model-driven design and leverage AI agents to enhance software solutions.
• Excellent problem-solving skills with a focus on aligning technical solutions to business and customer needs.
• Set technical direction for the Compass platform and its web experiences: own API and service boundaries, and lead the move to well-bounded domain services.
• Write and review production code across Java services and React/TypeScript front ends, and raise the bar on testing and quality.
• Work with product, positioning vendors, and partner-app teams on SDK contracts, rollouts, and incident response.
• Lead design reviews and ADRs, mentor engineers, and drive reliability, performance, and operational health.

At Sam's Club, 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, parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. 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.

• Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.

Live Better U is a company 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 Regional Pay Zone (RPZ) (based on location).

At Sam's Club, 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, parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. 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.

• Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.

Live Better U is a company 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 Regional Pay Zone (RPZ) (based on location). At Sam''s Club, 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, parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. 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.

• Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.

Live Better U is a company 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 Regional Pay Zone (RPZ) (based on location).