(USA) Principal, Software Engineer

Walmart; California (MO); On-site; USD 143,000 - 286,000; Full time

Job summary

Walmart is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead technical vision and strategy for backend architecture. This role involves mentoring engineers, defining service standards, and driving innovation in a high-throughput environment. Ideal candidates have extensive experience in microservices and operational excellence.

Benefits

401(k) match

Stock purchase plan

Paid maternity and parental leave

Multiple health plans

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in distributed backend systems.
• Expertise in defining SLAs/SLOs and incident management.

Responsibilities

• Define backend architecture roadmap and service standards.
• Mentor Staff and Senior Engineers in system design.

Skills

Technical Leadership

Microservice Design

Event-Driven Systems

Operational Excellence

Innovation

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science

Master's or PhD in Computer Science

Tools

Kafka

Flink

Spark

Job description

Position Summary...

What you'll do...

About Team

Marketplace Engineering team is at the forefront of building core platforms and services to enable Walmart to deliver vast selection at competitive prices and with best-in-class customer experience by enabling third-party sellers to the marketplace platform, sell and manage their products to our customers on walmart.com. We do this by managing the entire seller lifecycle, monitoring customer experience, and delivering high-value insights to our sellers to help them plan their assortment, price, inventory. The team also actively collaborates with partner platform teams to ensure we continue to deliver the best experience to our sellers and our customers.

What you’ll do

As a Principal Engineer, you will:

• Technical Vision & Strategy: Define and evangelize the long-term backend architecture roadmap, ensuring alignment with business objectives and anticipated scale (1M+ TPS).
• Establish service standards and patterns for microservices, event-driven systems, and stream processing, guiding the evolution of our platform over multiple years.

Cross-Team Leadership:

• Act as the technical authority across Engineering, Product, Data, and Security teams-driving consensus on complex trade-offs and design decisions.
• Mentor and coach Staff and Senior Engineers in system design, code quality, and operational best practices, fostering deep technical growth across the organization.

Platform & Framework Development:

• Architect core platform frameworks such as service mesh integrations, observability libraries, and domain-specific SDKs that empower other teams to build and operate at scale with minimal friction.
• Sponsor the adoption of cutting-edge technologies (e.g., reactive systems, distributed consensus protocols, real-time graph analytics) through prototypes and technical evangelism.

Operational Excellence & Resilience:

• Define SLAs, SLOs, and error-budget policies at the platform level; partner with Site Reliability Engineering to implement chaos experiments, canary analyses, and self-healing mechanisms.
• Lead post-mortem investigations for major incidents, driving root-cause analysis and systemic remediation to prevent recurrence.

Innovation & Research:

• Represent Walmart's Marketplace Engineering in industry and academic forums, scouting emerging research (e.g., quantum-inspired algorithms, generative AI for system optimization) and translating it into practical POCs.
• Guide R&D efforts that explore next-generation data layer and event-driven architectures, ensuring we maintain a competitive edge.

What you’ll bring

• Seasoned Technical Leadership: 15+ years of experience architecting and delivering mission-critical, distributed backend systems in high-throughput environments.
• Domain Expertise: Deep mastery of microservice design, event-driven and stream processing platforms (Kafka, Flink, Spark), and data-centric architectures (graph, OLTP/OLAP).
• Strategic Thinker: Proven track record defining multi-year technology roadmaps, aligning engineering investments with business metrics, and measuring impact across teams.
• Mentorship & Talent Development: Demonstrated ability to mentor Principal, Staff, and Senior Engineers—elevating technical standards, conducting rigorous design reviews, and cultivating leadership skills.
• Operational Excellence: Expertise in defining platform-wide SLAs/SLOs, automating reliability frameworks (chaos engineering, self-healing), and leading incident management at scale.
• Innovation Driver: History of sponsoring and delivering prototypes of emerging technologies, influencing architecture direction, and publishing thought leadership both internally and externally.
• Executive Communication: Exceptional ability to present complex technical strategies to senior leadership, articulate ROI, and secure alignment and resourcing for large-scale initiatives.
• Collaborative Maven: Skilled at navigating organizational complexity—engaging stakeholders across product, legal, finance, and compliance—to drive cohesive, cross-functional solutions.

Additional Qualifications:

• Thought Leadership: Speaker or contributor at major industry conferences (e.g., Kafka Summit, QCon) and author of technical publications or open-source projects.
• Advanced Degrees & Certifications: Master's or PhD in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent deep technical experience; certifications in cloud architecture or distributed systems a plus.
• Global Scale Experience: Demonstrated success building platforms that serve global user bases, with multi-region deployments, data sovereignty considerations, and disaster recovery planning.
• Enterprise Security Acumen: In-depth knowledge of enterprise security frameworks (zero-trust architectures, confidential computing) and regulatory compliance (PCI, HIPAA, GDPR).
• Architectural Frameworks: Proficiency in formal architecture practices (C4 model, Domain-Driven Design, Event Storming) and tooling (Sparx EA, Structurizr).
• Continuous Learning Advocate: Passion for fostering a learning culture—organizing brown-bags, hackathons, and technical book clubs to upskill engineering teams.

Our Ideal Candidate

You have a deep interest and passion for technology. You love owning new responsibilities and enjoy working with people who will keep challenging you at every stage. You have strong problem solving, analytic, decision-making and excellent communication with interpersonal skills. You are self-driven and motivated with entrepreneurial passion and desire to work in a fast-paced, results-driven agile environment with varied responsibilities. You have a passion to mentor and drive technical associates to deliver quality products in an agile environment. You have a flair to set up new processes and bring an innovative mindset to drive the team.

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 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 is a competitive advantage, and it’s fostered by being together. Working together in person allows us to collaborate, align quickly, and innovate with greater speed. We use our campuses to create purposeful connection rooted in deepening understanding and investing in the development of our associates. Our hubs: Walmart is a global company with offices across the United States and around the world. Our global headquarters is in Bentonville, Arkansas, with primary hubs in the San Francisco Bay area and New York/New Jersey.

Benefits:
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, 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.

The above information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed in the role. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. The full Job Description can be made available as part of the hiring process.

At Walmart, we offer competitive pay as well as performance-based bonus awards and other great benefits for a happier mind, body, and wallet. Health benefits include medical, vision, and dental coverage. Financial benefits include 401(k), stock purchase, and company-paid life insurance. Paid time off benefits include PTO (including sick leave), parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more. You will also receive PTO and/or PPTO that can be used for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes. The amount you receive depends on your job classification and length of employment. It will meet or exceed the requirements of paid sick leave laws, where applicable.

Live Better U is a Walmart-paid education benefit program for full-time and part-time associates in Walmart and Sam's Club facilities. Programs range from high school completion to bachelor's degrees, including English Language Learning and short-form certificates. Tuition, books, and fees are completely paid for by Walmart. Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on your job classification and length of employment. Benefits are subject to change and may be subject to specific plan or program terms.

For information about benefits and eligibility, see One.Walmart.

The annual salary range for this position is $143,000.00-$286,000.00. Additional compensation includes annual or quarterly performance bonuses. Additional compensation for certain positions may also include: - Stock

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.