Distinguished Software Engineer

Walmart

. Define and own the multi-year technical strategy and reference architecture for International Search & Personalization .

Posted 9/29/2026full-timeSunnyvale • California • United StatesSeniorLead💰 $169,000 - $338,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates extensive expertise in architecting and operating large-scale, cloud-native distributed systems, particularly in search and personalization. Proven ability to lead technical strategy, mentor engineering talent, and communicate complex technical concepts to executive audiences.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Cloud-Native Distributed SystemsSemantic and Hybrid Search EnginesMachine Learning Lifecycle and MLOpsTechnical Leadership and MentorshipAI-Native Discovery Architectures

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

PythonJavaScalaGoC++TensorFlowPyTorchKubernetesElasticsearchFAISS

Soft Skills

Exceptional Communication SkillsMentorshipCollaboration

Tools & Technologies

VespaOpenSearchRayHorovodSparkKafkaFlinkAirflowBigQueryMLflow

Certifications & Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Relevant Field

Industry Keywords

Multi-Tenant SystemsReal-Time PersonalizationRecommendation ArchitecturesData Quality and LineageA/B Testing

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AirflowAWSAzureBigQueryCloudDistributed SystemsElasticSearchGoogle Cloud PlatformJavaKafkaKubernetesMicroservicesPythonPyTorchRayScalaSparkTensorflowC++Go

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Define and own the multi-year technical strategy and reference architecture for International Search & Personalization
Architect AI-native discovery including LLM-powered query understanding, semantic and hybrid retrieval, generative and agentic shopping, and real-time personalization
Set architectural direction for multi-tenant, multi-market platforms
Establish organization-wide standards for system design, ML lifecycle and MLOps, data quality and lineage, model evaluation, responsible AI, observability, and resilience
Lead resolution of complex cross-cutting technical challenges, critical incidents, performance and cost bottlenecks, and platform modernization
Drive root causes to systemic fixes
Mentor and grow Principal and Senior engineers
Build a technical leadership bench and culture of craftsmanship, experimentation, and continuous learning
Partner with engineering, product, data science, and business leaders on roadmaps and build-versus-buy decisions
Communicate technical tradeoffs to executive audiences
Represent Walmart International in enterprise architecture forums
Influence shared Walmart Global Tech platforms
Contribute to Walmart’s external technical reputation through patents, publications, and industry engagement

Requirements

What you’ll need

15+ years of experience in the design and development of highly scalable distributed applications and platforms
Distinguished track record architecting and operating large-scale, cloud-native distributed systems for search, recommendations, personalization, or ads serving hundreds of millions of users
Proven ability to set technical direction across multiple teams and organizations
Demonstrated success developing senior technical talent and elevating engineering practices across a large organization
Exceptional communication skills for executive narratives and deep technical guidance
Deep hands-on experience with semantic and hybrid search engines such as Vespa, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, or Solr
Experience with tensor ranking, multi-phase ranking, lexical BM25, and dense vector retrieval
Knowledge of approximate nearest neighbor techniques including HNSW, IVF, and product quantization
Experience with FAISS, ScaNN, or Milvus
Experience with bi-encoders, two-tower models, ColBERT, and multilingual embedding models
Learning to rank with LambdaMART, XGBoost, or LightGBM
Experience with neural and cross-encoder rerankers and query understanding
Relevance evaluation using NDCG, MRR, and human judgment programs
Recommendation and personalization architectures, sequential/session-based models, graph-based recommenders, real-time features, and contextual bandits
Production experience with LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, fine-tuning, LLM serving, agent frameworks, evaluation, guardrails, and cost management
PyTorch and TensorFlow
Distributed training with Ray or Horovod
Feature stores and model lifecycle tooling such as Feast, MLflow, Kubeflow, or Vertex AI
Low-latency online inference and model monitoring
Batch and streaming pipelines with Spark, Kafka, and Flink
Airflow orchestration
BigQuery, Delta Lake, or Iceberg
Data quality, lineage, and SLA ownership
Large-scale A/B testing, interleaving, CUPED, and online/offline metric alignment
Kubernetes, containerized microservices, Azure, GCP, or AWS
CI/CD, observability, and resilience engineering
Strong programming skills in Python, Java, Scala, Go, or C++
Experience with multi-tenant or multi-market systems, multilingual search, localization, and market-specific catalog handling is highly valued
Option 1: Bachelor's degree in a relevant field and 6 years’ experience in software engineering or related area
Option 2: 8 years’ experience in software engineering or related area

Benefits

Comp & perks

Performance-based bonus awards
Medical, vision, and dental coverage
401(k)
Stock purchase
Company-paid life insurance
PTO, including sick leave
Parental leave
Family care leave
Bereavement leave
Jury duty leave
Voting leave
Short-term and long-term disability
Company discounts
Military Leave Pay
Adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement
PTO and/or PPTO for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes
Live Better U Walmart-paid education benefit program
Tuition, books, and fees completely paid for eligible education programs
Stock compensation may be included for certain positions