Principal, Data Engineer

Walmart; Chennai District; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Walmart Global Tech India in Chennai seeks a Principal Data Engineer to lead the design, development and evolution of a scalable enterprise data platform. You will translate strategic platform goals into durable data pipelines, drive modernization of data lakes, and mentor senior engineers across teams.

Work spans batch, streaming and AI-ready architectures, enabling real-time retail decisions, analytics, and AI workloads for billions of daily events, while championing reliability, security and

Qualifications

• Minimum10years of experience in Big Data and distributed computing.
• Proficiency in Java, Python, Spark and SQL essential.
• Experience with GCP and data engineering at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and evolution of the enterprise data platform.
• Mentor senior engineers and drive architectural direction.
• Develop scalable data pipelines for real-time and batch workloads.
• Collaborate with product, analytics, and AI teams to deliver value.

Skills

Big Data

Java

Python

Spark

GCP

SQL

Linux

Data Governance

Education

Bachelor's in Computer Science

Master's in Computer Science (preferred)

Tools

Hadoop

Hive

Presto

Kafka

Airflow

BigQuery

GCP data tools

Job description

Position Summary…

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 the 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.

What you’ll do…

Our Team

Global Marketplaceis Walmart’s third‑party commerce platform, connecting sellers to millions of customers across categories whileleveragingWalmart’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 andoperatesthe 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:

As a Principal Data Engineer , you are a hands‑on, senior technical engineer within Walmart Global Tech,AIand 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,serveshundreds of millions of customers and associates, across digital and physical channels, every day. Youoperateat the intersection of retail scale, near real‑time intelligence, and Agentic AI, translating our long‑term platform strategy into durable business impact.
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, andoptimizedfor 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.

As a Principal DataEngineer you will own and buildscalableandhighly availabledistributed systemsin production and will have following responsibilities:

• Develop APIs and services for enabling data for dependent systems and applications

• Develop and implement best-in-class Data pipelinesto ensureon time availability of Data and Insights.

• Data Source Identification: Helpsidentifythe most suitable source for data that is fit for purpose.

• DataModeling: Analyses complex data elements, systems, data flows, dependencies, and relationships to contribute to conceptual, physical, and logical data models.

• Enable data scientists,businessand product partners to fullyleverageour platform.

• Demonstrate and transform business requirements to code, specific analyticalreportsand tools.

• Design, build, test and deploycutting edgesolutions at scale,impactingmulti-billion-dollar business.

• Adopt and build AI Agents for discovery, development of data assets.

• Work closely with product owner and technical lead and playa major rolein the overall delivery of the assigned project/enhancements.

• Learn & Research on the go and work on both new requests/projects as well as support production.

• Providebusiness insights whileleveraginginternal tools and systems,databasesand industry data.

• Own a data subject and ensure availability and accuracy

• Work closely with all business units and engineering teams to develop strategy for long term data platform architecture.

• Design and implement data tools for analytics and data scientist team members to help them in building andoptimizingin the Walmart ecosystem.

• Creates training documentation and trains end-users on datamodeling. Oversees the tasks of less experienced programmers and stipulates system troubleshooting supports.

• Document requirements, data lineage, subject matter in both business and technical terminology.

• Applied Business Acumen: Provides recommendations to business stakeholders to solve complex business issues. Develops business cases, translates business requirements into projects, activities, andtasksand aligns to overall business strategy.

• Participate in designing data application architecture with senior architects.

• Data Governance:Establishes, modifies, and documents data governance practices in partnership with business stakeholders and peers.

• 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.

• Recommend ways to improve data reliability, efficiency, and quality.

What You’ll Bring:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related discipline with12+ years’ experience

• Minimum10years of experience in Big Data and distributed computing.

• Minimum10years of experience programming in Java,scala, python,Springboot& Nodejs,

• Strong experience with cloud‑native ecosystems (GCP ), includingBigQuery, Serverless, Pub/Sub, or equivalent.

• Expertisein batch and streaming technologies (Kafka, Spark Structured Streaming, Flink, Druid, etc.).

• Experience working with hybrid architectures that support bothreal‑time operations and analytical workloads.

• Agentic & AI‑Ready Systems Knowledge

• Strong understanding of semantic modeling, embeddings, knowledge graphs, and vector indexing.

• Experience supportingRAG, context‑aware AI, and agent orchestrationthrough data platform design.

• Ability to reasonaboutschema 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/PySparkand 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.

• Proven experience building pipelines on Big Data Technologies/Stack – Hadoop, Spark, Hive, Presto, Kafka, AirflowScheduler andGCP suite of data tools.

• Deep understanding of the Hadoop ecosystem and strong conceptual knowledge in Hadoop architecture components and experience in working on at least one Big Data technology with Java, Python or Scala.

• Strong knowledge ofdeploying and managing applications in GCP.

• Strong scripting skills to processlargeamount of data and highly proficient in SQL.

• preferred skills below

• Solid knowledge of Linux systems with the ability to troubleshoot issues in complex, distributed, multi-tier architectures.

• Experience in secure,scalableandhighly availableservices.

• Experience with data science and machine learning is a plus.

• Build the infrastructurerequiredforoptimalextraction, transformation, and loading ofdatafrom a wide variety ofdatasources using SQL and GCP ‘bigdata’ technologies.

• Excellent hands-on working knowledge and experience with object-oriented/object function scripting languages: Python, Java, C++, Scala, and development of Micro-services.

• Good written and verbal communication skills.

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.

Benefits

Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance. Other great perks include a host of best‑in‑class benefits maternity and parental leave, PTO, health benefits, and much more.

Belonging

We aim to create a culture where every associate feels valued for who they are, rooted in respect for the individual. Our goal is to foster a sense of belonging, to create opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers, and to be a Walmart for everyone.

At Walmart, our vision is “everyone included.” By fostering a workplace culture where everyone is—and feels—included, everyone wins. Our associates and customers reflect the makeup of all 19 countries where we operate. By making Walmart a welcoming place where all people feel like they belong, we’re able to engage associates, strengthen our business, improve our ability to serve customers, and support the communities where we operate.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Walmart, Inc., is an Equal Opportunities 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.

Minimum Qualifications…

Outlined below are the required minimum qualifications for this position. If none are listed, there are no minimum qualifications.

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.

Primary Location…

Tower 1, Part Of 1st, 2nd To 4th Flrs, Intl Tech Park Radial Road (radial It Park Pvt Ltd), , India