Walmart Data Engineer

Walmart Data Engineer

Company Overview:

Walmart Global Tech is a team of over 15,000 software engineers, data scientists, and service professionals delivering innovative technology solutions that enhance the retail experience for millions of customers and empower Walmart's 2.2 million associates. You will join a virtual-first, collaborative team focused on building the foundational intelligence through data, AI, and semantic modeling that drives autonomous decision-making across Walmart’s ecosystem.

Role and Responsibilities of Walmart Data Engineer:

You will lead the transformation of Walmart’s massive data ecosystem into a semantic and contextual layer, enabling AI agents to reason, plan, and act autonomously. You will manage a high-performing engineering team and architect scalable, real-time data pipelines optimized for AI reasoning.

• Define the technical vision for a unified semantic layer, transforming structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data into context-aware representations consumable by LLMs and multi-agent workflows.
• Own streaming architecture using Kafka, building low-latency event-driven pipelines to provide agents with real-time member context and environmental state.
• Ensure data engineering excellence through scalable schemas, partitioning strategies, and high-performance indexing for petabyte-scale data access.
• Lead design of Agentic Data pipelines that deliver high-fidelity, optimized data enriched with business logic to prevent hallucinations.
• Manage, mentor, and develop a team of engineers, bridging AI/ML research, product, and platform engineering to align data roadmaps with autonomous decision-making goals.
• Develop and optimize retrieval systems (RAG) to enable agents to efficiently discover and interact with proprietary knowledge bases across batch and streaming sources.
• Implement operational excellence standards including telemetry, lineage, and auditability for autonomous and regulated AI workflows.

Required Skills and Experience of Walmart Data Engineer:

• 7–10+ years of experience in Data Engineering with large-scale, distributed, fault-tolerant data platforms, including at least 3+ years in a leadership role.
• Deep expertise in data modeling (Star/Snowflake, Data Vault), storage formats (Parquet, Avro), and distributed computing concepts (sharding, replication, CAP theorem).
• Extensive experience with Kafka and event-driven architectures, including state management and schema evolution in streaming environments (Kafka Streams, Flink, Spark Streaming).
• Familiarity with Vector Databases (Pinecone, Milvus), Knowledge Graphs, and AI orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI).
• Cloud platform experience in GCP or Azure with BigQuery, Dataflow, and Pub/Sub at petabyte scale.
• Advanced understanding of data modeling for LLMs, including schema design, latency, and context window management for AI reasoning.
• Proficiency in Python, Java, or Scala, with strong focus on testability, maintainability, and high-performance system design.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and 5 years’ experience in software engineering or related field, OR 7 years’ experience in software engineering, OR Master’s degree in Computer Science with 3 years’ experience.
• 4 years’ experience in data engineering, database engineering, business intelligence, or business analytics.
• 1 year’s supervisory experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field with 5 years’ experience in software engineering or related field.
• Experience with ETL tools and managing large datasets in cloud environments.
• Demonstrated knowledge of inclusive digital experiences, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standards, and assistive technologies.
• Background in implementing accessibility best practices for inclusive product and service delivery.

Compensation and Benefits of Walmart Data Engineer:

• Annual salary range: $143,000 - $286,000, with additional annual or quarterly performance bonuses.
• Stock options and participation in Walmart’s stock purchase plan.
• Health benefits including medical, vision, and dental coverage.
• 401(k) plan with company match.
• Paid time off including PTO, parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting.
• Additional benefits including short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, and adoption or surrogacy expense reimbursement.
• Live Better U program covering education from high school completion to bachelor’s degrees, with tuition, books, and fees fully paid by Walmart.

About Walmart:

At Walmart Global Tech, we innovate to simplify the retail experience, ensuring technology benefits millions of customers and supports associates worldwide. Our culture emphasizes inclusion, collaboration, and continuous learning. We empower teams to deliver meaningful solutions while fostering a flexible virtual-first work environment that encourages cre