Principal, Software Engineer

Walmart Global Tech India; Chennai District; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 6,500,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Incentive awards

Health benefits

Parental leave

Job summary

Walmart Global Tech India is seeking a Principal Engineer to help shape a newly formed platform team in Chennai. You will design and deliver large-scale, reliable data platforms and services across the enterprise, collaborating with data engineers, scientists, and ML engineers.

You will guide architecture, drive SRE and OE practices, and mentor engineers while staying hands-on with production code and platform tooling. This role is based in Chennai with daily on-site work flexibility.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in Java and Python; experience in Go/C++/Scala is a plus.
• Deep experience with microservices, distributed systems, and API design.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate distributed platform services and APIs on cloud-native infrastructure.
• Evaluate trade-offs, scalability, and cost; drive robust platform solutions.
• Contribute to Spark-based data pipelines and data engineering workloads as needed.
• Develop AI/GenAI-enabled platform capabilities and tooling to improve developer productivity.

Skills

Java

Python

System design

DDD

Scala

Go

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Spark

Hadoop/HDFS

Hive

Kafka

Docker

CI/CD

Job description

About Team

GDF (Global Data Foundation) is part of Walmart's AI & Data organization - the team building the foundational data platforms that power AI, analytics, and decision-making across every Walmart banner and geography, from supply chain and merchandising to customer experience and enterprise AI agents. Our newly created platform team is chartered with building next-generation data infrastructure at Walmart scale: reliable, high-throughput data pipelines, distributed processing systems, and platform capabilities that downstream teams across Walmart depend on every day.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and operate distributed platform services and APIs using Java and Python, applied against Kubernetes or equivalent cloud-native infrastructure.
• Apply domain-oriented design, system design, and low-level design (LLD) rigor to ambiguous platform problems - evaluating dependencies, trade-offs, failure modes, scalability, cost, and long-term durability before writing a line of code.
• Flex into data engineering work when needed: contribute directly to Spark-based data pipelines and processing jobs, working comfortably in GDF's data engineering codebase alongside platform work.
• Build AI, GenAI, and agentic-powered platform capabilities: intelligent developer tooling, workflow automation, agentic services, and AI-assisted operational tooling (monitoring, incident triage, capacity planning).
• Own platform reliability, scalability, and observability - service-level objectives, distributed tracing, alerting, and incident response for services you build, with a strong Operational Excellence /Engineering Excellence discipline.
• Guide architecture and system design decisions across microservices, event-driven systems, and enterprise integrations, with an explicit eye toward how platform choices affect downstream data engineering workloads.
• Partner with data engineers, data scientists, and ML engineers to ensure platform services expose the right primitives for data pipelines, feature stores, and model-serving paths.
• Establish engineering standards through architecture reviews, design reviews, code reviews, and production readiness reviews for a team building process from scratch.
• As a Principal engineer, set technical direction and best practices across multiple teams and the broader GDF platform without needing a management title - mentor other engineers and influence GDF's broader platform engineering standards.
• Continuously evaluate emerging platform, cloud, and AI/agentic technologies, adopting them pragmatically where they improve reliability, productivity, or business value.

What You'll Bring

• Genuinely hands-on coding: 12+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating large-scale distributed platforms; strong proficiency in Java and Python is required - comfortable writing, reviewing, and debugging production code, not just directing others. Additional experience with Go, C++, or Scala is a plus.
• Operational Excellence (OE) and Engineering Excellence (EE) mindset is a required skill, not a nice-to-have: SLO/SLA ownership, incident management and blameless post-incident reviews, proactive reliability and quality metrics, and continuous improvement built into how you ship, not bolted on afterward.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Deep experience with microservices architectures, distributed systems, event-driven patterns, API design, service contracts, and enterprise system integration - backed by strong system design, domain-oriented design (DDD), and low-level design (LLD) skills, with demonstrated ownership of production code and the judgment to evaluate trade-offs, failure modes, scalability, and cost.
• Deep understanding of cloud-native engineering practices - CI/CD, containerization, Kubernetes or equivalent orchestration, infrastructure automation, and production operations.
• Strong exposure to Big Data / data engineering technologies - Spark required at a working level, with familiarity in Hadoop/HDFS, Hive, or Kafka - enough to flex into data engineering work confidently, not just integrate with it from a distance.
• Full exposure to AI and Agentic technologies: hands-on experience integrating model APIs and GenAI/LLM tooling, building or operating agentic workflows (tool-calling agents, multi-step autonomous systems), working with embeddings/vector search, and applying MLOps practices (feature stores, model lifecycle, retraining pipelines) - not just conceptual awareness.
• Strong knowledge of reliability engineering - observability, distributed tracing, logging, metrics, alerting, incident response, capacity planning, and fault tolerance for large-scale systems.
• Strong grounding in security, privacy, and enterprise engineering practices, including authentication, authorization, data protection, and secure API design.
• Proven ability to translate ambiguous technical/business problems into clear execution plans, particularly across a newly formed platform organization without fully established process.
• Strong ownership mindset and technical judgment; comfortable operating with high autonomy in a 0-to-1 environment.

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 sets us apart, and we know being together helps us innovate, learn and grow great careers. This role is based in our Chennai office for daily work, with the flexibility for associates to manage their personal lives.

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.

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.

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

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