Principal, Software Engineer

Required Qualifications
Technical Expertise
10+ years of software engineering experience building large-scale
distributed systems.
5+ years of experience designing and architecting complex distributed
systems in production environments.
10+ years of hands-on experience with Java and Go.
Deep understanding of JVM internals, memory management, garbage
collection, thread management, and performance tuning.
Strong expertise in concurrent and multithreaded programming.
10+ years of experience with SQL and NoSQL databases.
Deep understanding of storage engines, indexing, query optimization,
database internals, and performance tuning.
Strong hands-on coding skills with a track record of delivering production-
quality software.
Leadership & Problem Solving
Exceptional analytical, debugging, and problem-solving skills.
Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and drive alignment across
engineering teams and senior stakeholders.
Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to influence
technical decisions through data-driven discussions.
Experience mentoring engineers and driving engineering excellence at
scale.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience building security, identity, authorization, governance, or data
protection platforms.
Experience working with large-scale cloud-native systems and
microservices architectures.
Familiarity with distributed data processing frameworks and big data
technologies.
Experience operating systems at petabyte scale.
Platform Engineering Leadership:

Delivers platform capabilities across a technical area or sub-organization,
including shared infrastructure, reusable tooling, and scalable ML frameworks
(for example, CI/CD pipelines, SDKs, model runtimes, feature stores).
Aligns engineering efforts with roadmap milestones and domain strategies,
ensuring execution supports long-term platform evolution.
Applies cloud-native architecture principles and best practices in distributed
system design to enable high availability, scalability, and fault tolerance.
Technical Execution & Lifecycle Management:
Drives the full software development lifecycle across multiple teams—including
coding, testing, CI/CD deployment, observability, monitoring, incident response,
and maintenance.
Implements distributed architectures optimized for real-time data processing,
AI/ML integration, and cross-service reliability.
Maintains architectural decision records (ADRs) to ensure traceability, alignment,
and transparency in technical planning and tradeoffs.
AI/ML Integration & Product Development:
Architects and builds intelligent software systems and AI-enhanced applications
that serve millions of customers and associates.
Leads the integration of AI agents capable of multi-step reasoning and tool-
augmented tasks using technologies such as Python, Java, JavaScript, Dart, Rust,
and C++.
Applies model-driven design and leverage tools like GitHub Copilot to increase
development velocity and quality.
Technical Leadership & Mentorship:
Provides strategic technical guidance and mentorship to Engineers and their
teams, fostering engineering excellence and innovation.
Influences architectural decisions and design patterns across teams to promote
standardization, maintainability, and system interoperability.
Showcases Walmart’s engineering vision through knowledge sharing, community
leadership, and by publishing technical articles and insights internally and
externally.
Customer/Associate Problem Definition & Metrics:

Engages with cross-functional stakeholders to deeply understand business and
user needs.
Breaks down ambiguous problems into actionable technical requirements and
defines clear operational, engineering, and customer-centric metrics to measure
success and value delivery.
Technical Ownership:
Demonstrates responsibility for deliverables, ensuring solutions meet quality
standards and business objectives.
Takes initiative to resolve issues and drive projects to completion.
Technical Judgment:
Applies sound reasoning to make informed technical decisions, balancing trade-
offs and considering long-term impacts on system architecture and business
goals.
Change Agility:
Adapts quickly to change, embraces new technologies, and understands the
broader system context.
Anticipates the downstream effects of technical choices and integrates feedback
to improve outcomes.
Collaboration:
Works effectively across teams, openly shares knowledge, and communicates
complex ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Innovation & Continuous Improvement:
Proactively seeks opportunities to enhance processes, tools, and products.
Encourages experimentation and learning to drive ongoing improvement.
Drives the execution of multiple business plans and projects by identifying
customer and operational needs; developing and communicating business plans
and priorities; removing barriers and obstacles that impact performance;
providing resources; identifying performance standards; measuring progress and
adjusting performance accordingly; developing contingency plans; and
demonstrating adaptability and supporting continuous learning.

Provides supervision and development opportunities for associates by selecting
and training; mentoring; assigning duties; building a team-based work
environment; establishing performance expectations and conducting regular
performance evaluations; providing recognition and rewards; coaching for
success and improvement; and promoting a belonging mindset in workplace.
Promotes and supports company policies, procedures, mission, values, and
standards of ethics and integrity by training and providing direction to others in
their use and application; ensuring compliance with them; and utilizing and
supporting the Open Door Policy.
Ensures business needs are being met by evaluating the ongoing effectiveness of
current plans, programs, and initiatives; consulting with business partners,
managers, co-workers, or other key stakeholders; soliciting, evaluating, and
applying suggestions for improving efficiency and cost effectiveness; and
participating in and supporting community outreach events.
Software Development, Software Architecture, Solution Design, Continuous
Integration
Respect the Individual: Demonstrates and encourages respect for all; builds a
high-performing team; seeks, and embraces differences in people, cultures, ideas
and experiences; creates a workplace where all associates feel seen, supported
and connected through culture of belonging so associates thrive and perform;
drives a positive associate and customer/member experience for all; identifies,
attracts, and retains the best team members.
Respect the Individual: Creates a discipline and focus around developing talent,
through feedback, coaching, mentoring, and developmental opportunities;
promotes an environment allowing everyone to bring their best selves to work;
empowers associates and partners to act in the best interest of the
customer/member and company; and regularly recognizes others’ contributions
and accomplishments.
Respect the Individual: Builds strong and trusting relationships with team
members and business partners; works collaboratively and cross-functionally to
achieve objectives; and communicates and listens attentively, with energy and
positivity to motivate, influence, and inspire commitment and action.

Act with Integrity: Maintains and promotes the highest standards of integrity,
ethics and compliance; models the Walmart values and leads by example to
foster our culture; supports Walmart’s goal of becoming a regenerative company
by making a positive impact for associates, customers, and the world around us
(e.g., creating a sense of belonging, eliminating waste, participating in local
giving).
Act with Integrity: Follows the law, our code of conduct and company policies,
and sets expectations for others to do the same; promotes an environment where
associates feel comfortable sharing concerns and reinforces our culture of non-
retaliation; listens to concerns raised by associates. takes action and encourages
others to do the same; holds self and others accountable for achieving results in a
way that is consistent with our values.
Act with Integrity: Acts as an altruistic servant leader and is consistently humble,
self-aware, honest, and transparent.
Serve our Customers and Members: Delivers expected business results while
putting the customer/member first and consistently applying an omni-merchant
mindset and acts with an Every Day Low-Cost mindset to drive value and Every
Day Low Prices for customers/members.
Serve our Customers and Members: Adopts a holistic perspective that considers
data, analytics, customer/member insights, and different parts of the business
when making plans and shaping the team’s strategy.
Strive for Excellence: Consistently raises the bar and seeks to improve;
demonstrates curiosity and a growth mindset; seeks feedback, asks thoughtful
questions, fosters an environment that supports learning, innovation, and
learning from mistakes, and intelligent risk-taking; and exhibits resilience in the
face of setbacks.
Strive for Excellence: Seeks and implements continuous improvements and
encourages the team to leverage new digital tools and ways of working.