AI-Driven Search Runtime Architect

Walmart; United States; On-site; USD 169,000 - 338,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock purchase plan

401(k) match

Paid parental leave

Health benefits

Job summary

Walmart Global Tech in Sunnyvale, CA is seeking a Distinguished Software Engineer to lead the Search Runtime platform. You will own the technical vision, architecture, and AI-powered search initiatives at scale, coordinating across multiple teams and driving high-impact product discovery improvements.

You will design scalable, low-latency systems, integrate ML models into production, and mentor engineers while optimizing performance and cost.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS/engineering or related area with 6+ years’ software engineering experience in distributed systems.
• Strong product and engineering mindset, linking design decisions to customer experience and business outcomes.
• Deep expertise in search architectures: retrieval, indexing, ranking and trade-offs.
• Experience designing/run-time orchestration systems for complex distributed workflows.
• Experience with low-latency, high-availability services and performance optimization.
• Proficient in backend tech (Java/Spring or similar) and cloud-native architectures.
• Proven ability to lead large cross-team engineering initiatives and influence system design.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive technical strategy and architecture for Search Runtime across retrieval, ranking, indexing, and serving systems.
• Lead design of scalable, low-latency, high-availability distributed systems.
• Build and evolve AI-powered search capabilities including semantic search and ML-driven ranking.
• Integrate ML/AI models into real-time production systems to improve relevance and conversion.
• Drive observability, reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
• Lead large cross-org initiatives and align engineering, product, and data science teams.
• Mentor and develop engineers across levels and raise design and coding standards.
• Identify and resolve system bottlenecks; drive continuous optimization.

Skills

Distributed systems

Search architectures

AI/ML relevance

Low-latency

High availability

Backend technologies (Java/Spring)

Cross-team leadership

Architectural strategy

Run-time orchestration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field

Master’s degree (preferred)

Job description

Walmart Global Tech in Sunnyvale, CA is seeking a Distinguished Software Engineer to lead the Search Runtime platform. You will own the technical vision, architecture, and AI-powered search initiatives at scale, coordinating across multiple teams and driving high-impact product discovery improvements.

You will design scalable, low-latency systems, integrate ML models into production, and mentor engineers while optimizing performance and cost.