Staff, Data Scientist – Conversational AI

Walmart; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking company at the forefront of AI technology, where you will leverage your expertise in Natural Language Processing to enhance customer experiences. As part of a dynamic team, you will work on innovative projects that impact millions, utilizing state-of-the-art machine learning models and data science techniques. This role offers a unique opportunity to contribute to the design and implementation of cutting-edge conversational platforms, while collaborating in a hybrid work environment that promotes flexibility and creativity. If you are passionate about technology and eager to make a significant impact, this is the perfect opportunity for you.

Benefits

401(k) match

Stock purchase plan

Paid maternity and parental leave

PTO

Multiple health plans

Incentive awards for performance

Qualifications

• Experience with Python and solid knowledge of SQL.
• Hands-on experience with classical ML models and statistical measures.

Responsibilities

• Improve and evolve NLP capabilities for customer interactions.
• Analyze data to identify patterns and conduct error analysis.

Skills

Python

Machine Learning

Statistical Analysis

Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

Data Analysis

Communication Skills

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or Statistics

PhD in a relevant field

Tools

SQL

Deep Learning Models (Transformers, BERT, etc.)

ML-ops

Job description

Position Summary

Cortex Team is Walmart’s core A.I. conversational platform, powering the vision of delivering the world’s best personal assistants to Walmart’s customers, accessible via natural voice commands, text messages, rich UI interactions, and a mix of all of the above via multi-modal experiences.

We believe conversations are a natural and powerful user interface for interacting with technology and enable a richer customer experience – both online and in-store. We are building and designing the next generation of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) services that other teams can easily integrate and leverage, and build rich experiences: from pure voice and text shopping assistants (Siri, Sparky), to customer care channels, to mobile apps with rich, intertwined, multi-modal interaction modes (Me@Walmart).

Interested in diving in?

We need passionate and seasoned NLP data scientists to help us improve and evolve our capabilities, taking into account the full conversational context, multi-modal interactions, and an ever-increasing list of use cases.

Come at the right time, and you will have an enormous opportunity to make a massive impact on the design, architecture, and implementation of an innovative, mission-critical product, driven by data science, used every day by people you know, and which customers love.

As part of the emerging tech group, you will also have the additional opportunity of building demos, proof of concepts, creating white papers, writing blogs, etc.

Minimum Qualifications

• Experience with Python; solid knowledge of SQL.
• Hands-on experience with classical ML models, test/train/evaluation metrics, key parameters/techniques that affect model performance.
• Understanding of relevant statistical measures such as confidence intervals, significance of error measurements, development and evaluation data sets.
• Familiarity and ideally experience with NLU/NLP, more recent deep ML models (e.g., Transformers, BERT, Llama, Gpts, Gemini) and safe fine-tuning of these.
• A business analytical mind; ability to communicate with consumers of the model and present results in intuitive ways.
• Experience analyzing data to identify patterns and conducting error/deviation analysis; passion for fixing issues in the data and finding the optimal representation.
• Ability to take a project from scoping requirements through actual launch.
• A continuous drive to explore, improve, enhance, automate, and optimize models and products.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Bachelor’s degree or certification in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or any other related field.

Preferred Qualifications

• Exposure to real-world, production-grade agentic systems.
• Familiarity with LLMs serving optimizations and multi-LoRa.
• Ability to develop experimental and analytic plans for data modeling processes, use of strong baselines, ability to accurately determine cause and effect relations.
• Strong attention to detail and exceptional level of organization.
• Proven ability to achieve results in a fast-paced, highly collaborative, dynamic work environment.
• Hands-on expertise in many disparate technologies and the full model lifecycle, typically ranging from data pipelines, data extraction, model training, model serving, labeling tools, ML-ops, ad-hoc tooling and all points in between.
• PhD in a relevant field (Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics or a related field).

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 experts, 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 skill sets 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.

Flexible, hybrid work

We use a hybrid way of working that is primarily in office coupled with virtual when not onsite. Our campuses serve as a hub to enhance collaboration, bring us together for purpose and deliver on business needs. This approach helps us make quicker decisions, remove location barriers across our global team and be more flexible in our personal lives.

Benefits

Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance. Other great perks include 401(k) match, stock purchase plan, paid maternity and parental leave, PTO, multiple health plans, and much more.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Walmart, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer – By Choice. We believe we are best equipped to help our associates,