(USA) Senior, Data Scientist

Walmart Inc.; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 117,000 - 234,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discount Card

Live Better U

Walmart Academy

Medical, dental, vision coverage

On-site childcare

Job summary

Walmart Inc. is seeking a Senior Data Scientist for the Retail AI Foundations team in Sunnyvale, CA. You will develop, evaluate, and deploy advanced AI models powering Walmart’s customer and business experiences, working with ML Engineers, PMs, data teams, and business partners.

You’ll translate opportunities into technical requirements, run experiments, and iterate in production, mentoring junior scientists and engineers on rigorous experimentation and responsible AI practices.

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in CS/EE/ML/quantitative field or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years analytics or related field if Bachelor’s; 1+ year with Master’s; 5+ years with alternative path.

Responsibilities

• Build, evaluate, and deploy ML models and Generative AI across domains (LLMs, vision, multimodal).
• Develop data and evaluation strategies, including dataset curation and offline evaluation.
• Design experiments, benchmarks, A/B tests, and optimize model performance for production.

Skills

Python

ML/DL

NLP

Computer Vision

Multimodal AI

Model Evaluation

LLMs

Education

Master’s or PhD in CS/EE/ML/Statistics/Math

Tools

scikit-learn

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

Retail AI Foundations is part of the Retail Intelligence group within Walmart’s AI & Data organization. The team develops and deploys Generative AI and machine learning platforms, models, and services across Walmart’s highest-impact growth pillars—including AI Shopping, Social Commerce, Walmart Connect advertising, creator experiences, marketing, and rich-media content.

Our Applied Science and ML Engineering teams build AI capabilities across Large Language Models (LLMs), image and video generation, and multimodal understanding. We partner with scientists, engineers, product managers, and business leaders to improve experiences for customers, associates, advertisers, and creators, while delivering measurable business outcomes. We are committed to exceeding industry standards through cutting-edge research, strong engineering execution, and responsible AI practices.

Role Summary

As a Senior Data Scientist within Retail AI Foundations, you will develop, evaluate, and deploy advanced AI models and algorithms that power Walmart’s next-generation customer and business experiences. You will apply applied-science rigor to turn complex customer and business problems into scalable, measurable AI solutions.

This role combines hands-on model development with cross-functional influence. You will work directly with ML Engineers, product managers, data teams, and business partners to define success measures, build and validate models, and improve their performance in production.

What You’ll Do

• Build, evaluate, and improve ML and Generative AI models across LLMs, image and video generation, multimodal understanding, and agentic systems.
• Develop data and evaluation strategies, including dataset curation, exploratory analysis, feature engineering, error analysis, ground truth, and offline evaluation.
• Design and execute model experiments, benchmarking, and A/B tests to measure quality, safety, reliability, latency, scalability, and business impact.
• Apply post-training, fine-tuning, retrieval, prompting, and other optimization techniques to improve model performance for production use cases.
• Partner with product, engineering, data, and business teams to translate customer and business opportunities into technical requirements, success metrics, and deployable solutions.
• Work with ML Engineers to deploy, monitor, and iterate on models in large-scale production environments.
• Communicate technical recommendations and model results to stakeholders, while mentoring junior scientists and engineers on rigorous experimentation and responsible AI practices.

What You’ll Bring

• Strong hands-on expertise in Python, machine learning, deep learning, NLP, information retrieval, computer vision, multimodal AI, and model evaluation.
• Ability to translate customer and business needs into model designs, experiments, technical requirements, and scalable production solutions; communicate findings and tradeoffs clearly across product, engineering, data, business, and leadership teams.
• Experience adapting open-weight models for specific business use cases through model selection, post-training, fine-tuning, and evaluation, including LLM-, vision-, multimodal-, and agent-based systems.
• Experience benchmarking models and participating in A/B tests; optimizing training and inference architectures across quality, cost, latency, throughput, scalability, and reliability through techniques such as prompt optimization, custom loss functions, reasoning models, and test-time scaling.
• Experience creating high-quality retail training and evaluation data, including dataset sourcing and curation, unsupervised or weakly supervised learning, synthetic-data approaches, and ground-truth development with crowdsourcing and annotation partners.
• Experience with distributed training and inference, large-scale model serving, and massively parallel GPU systems; ability to use AI coding assistants effectively and build production agentic AI applications that orchestrate models, tools, and workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience building machine learning models or developing algorithms for business applications.
• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, Engineering, Robotics, Operations Research, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field; or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience with LLM post-training and alignment, including supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, RLHF, DPO, or related techniques.
• Experience with image or video generation models, multimodal understanding models, or production computer-vision systems.
• Experience building, evaluating, and operating LLM- or agent-based systems at production scale.

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.

For information about PTO, see https://one.walmart.com/notices .

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 a specific plan or program terms.

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

The annual salary range for this position is $117,000.00 - $234,000.00

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 Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field and 3 years' experience in an analytics related field.
• Option 2- Master’s degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field and 1 years' experience in an analytics related field.
• Option 3 - 5 years' experience in an analytics or related field.

Preferred Qualifications...

Data science, machine learning, optimization models, Master’s degree in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Information Technology, Operations Research, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Econometrics, Successful completion of one or more assessments in Python, Spark, Scala, or R, Using open source frameworks (for example, scikit learn, tensorflow, torch), 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...

815 Eleventh Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-4731, United States of AmericaWalmart and its subsidiaries are committed to maintaining a drug-free workplace and has a no tolerance policy regarding the use of illegal drugs and alcohol on the job. This policy applies to all employees and aims to create a safe and productive work environment.

Benefits you’ll enjoy

Discount Card

Get 10% off

Walmart associates are eligible for a 10% discount card on most regular-priced items and fresh produce in-store and on select items at Walmart.com. Eligible after 90 days of employment.

Live Better U

100% covered

Earn a degree or in-demand skills certificates with no debt- Walmart covers 100% of tuition and books. Live Better U offers 60+ programs for Associates to pursue their dreams.

Ready to grow your career? Walmart Academy offers job-specific retail training and leadership courses to help Associates reach their career goals.

Medical, dental, vision, and wellness programs for you and your family

Access mental health resources and assistance programs for life’s challenges

Training, leadership programs, and clear paths to advance.

Imagine a workplace surrounded by innovation.At Walmart’s new Home Office in Bentonville, Arkansas, we’re redefining what it means to work at a global leader.

Set on 350 acres of thoughtfully revitalized land, our new campus seamlessly integrates the charm of Northwest Arkansas with cutting edge design and technology. From biking trails and outdoor courtyards to flexible, tech-enabled workspaces, every detail reflects our commitment to sustainability, connection, and culture.

With amenities like on-site childcare at our Little Squiggles Children’s Enrichment Center, the Walton Family Whole Health & Fitness Center, and a vibrant food hall featuring local and international favorites, we’re creating a space where work-life balance isn’t just a goal—it’s a reality.

Beyond the campus, Bentonville offers a dynamic lifestyle with world-class dining, art at the Crystal Bridges Museum, and countless outdoor activities.

Whether you’re exploring High South cuisine, enjoying live performances at our new amphitheater, or cycling the Razorback Greenway, you’ll experience the perfect blend of small-town charm and big-city amenities.

Join us at Walmart and grow your career alongside a community that feels like home.

This isn’t just a workplace—it’s a destination for leaders eager to make a difference.

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