Principal Software Engineer

Position Summary...

What you'll do...

Job Description Summary:

We are seeking an exceptional Principal Engineer to lead the design and delivery of highly scalable, distributed systems powering Walmart's Marketplace Trust platform. As a technical anchor for the team, you will drive architectural decisions, set engineering standards, and build innovative, data-driven platforms that enable associates to effectively support sellers and maintain the integrity of our Marketplace ecosystem.

About the Team

We are part of the Marketplace Trust organization, responsible for keeping the Marketplace safe and risk-free for our customers and sellers. Our team builds, manages, and supports platforms that enable associates to effectively assist sellers and maintain operational excellence across the ecosystem.

As part of the Trust organization, our team develops solutions that allow associates to efficiently:

• View and resolve seller issues
• Seamlessly integrate with other Marketplace systems
• Automate manual resolution processes
• Monitor and enforce compliance standards

Our goal is to improve operational efficiency while supporting Walmart's Everyday Low Cost philosophy by reducing operational costs through innovative, scalable solutions.

What You'll Do

About Your Role

In this role, you will be a Principal Engineer – Technical Leader and Innovator serving as an individual contributor who drives architectural excellence, mentors senior engineers, and pioneers AI-augmented engineering practices within the Marketplace Trust platform. As a platform-level engineer, you will lead the technical strategy for complex software systems, build and maintain shared infrastructure and tooling that enable team execution, and align your work to roadmap milestones and domain priorities.

You will partner closely with Product, Data Science, Engineering, and Business leaders to deliver solutions that improve seller experience, operational efficiency, and platform reliability while ensuring security and compliance at scale. Your impact multiplies across teams as you provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineers, advancing standardization, reusability, and scalability across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture & System Design

• Lead end-to-end technical design for complex initiatives involving API contracts, UI interfaces, data models, distributed system topologies, and cross-cutting concerns
• Drive platform standardization by defining and documenting reference architectures, design patterns, and implementation guardrails that teams adopt
• Evaluate and select technologies, frameworks, and cloud-native patterns with a clear-eyed understanding of trade-offs at Walmart's operational scale
• Author and review RFCs and architecture decision records (ADRs) that become the technical canon for the platform
• Work closely with architects and cross-functional teams to ensure solutions meet QCD standards (Quality, Cost, and Delivery)

Hands-On Engineering & Platform Development

• Write production-grade code and not prototypes or proof-of-concepts; test and deploy them to production
• Solve complex problems considering performance, reliability, and scalability
• Prototype new solutions rapidly using AI-augmented development workflows and then drive them to production quality
• Conduct deep-dive code reviews that raise the technical bar of the team
• Own the full software development lifecycle for your initiatives involving design, development, testing, deployment, and observability

Complex Problem Solving & Platform Reliability

• Solve the hardest and most complex problems and enable the team while doing so
• Lead technical investigations for P0/P1 incidents affecting platform services; own the root cause analysis and define permanent fixes
• Challenge technical assumptions early in the design process before they become expensive production mistakes
• Navigate ambiguity with confidence by breaking down underspecified problems into structured technical approaches and drive alignment across stakeholders
• Design for resilience from first principles; define and own the platform's non-functional requirements
• Instrument systems to be deeply observable and use the signals to drive continuous improvement

AI & Innovation Leadership

This role is AI-forward by design and requires someone who actively shapes how it is used and pushes the frontier of what AI-augmented engineering looks like at scale.

Day-to-Day AI Fluency:

• Proficient with GitHub Copilot, Wibey, and LLM-based tooling as active, daily parts of your development workflow
• Use AI to compress every phase of the engineering loop: schema design validation, code generation and review, test coverage acceleration, documentation, incident root-cause analysis, and API design feedback
• Identify where AI can replace toil, then build the automation yourself

AI-Native Platform Thinking:

• Architect and build AI-native capabilities like intelligent issue detection, AI-assisted resolution workflows, smart alerting, and anomaly detection
• Evaluate and integrate AI/ML capabilities into services where they create measurable operational and business value
• Stay current on the fast-moving AI tooling landscape and bring high-signal, opinionated recommendations to the team

AI Advocacy & Enablement:

• Model AI-augmented engineering practices for the team through live demos, pairing sessions, and written guides
• Work with engineering leadership to identify and prioritize investments where AI creates the most leverage across teams
• Contribute to the broader Walmart engineering community's understanding of how to build and operate AI-augmented systems responsibly

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

• Mentor and develop senior and staff engineers through pair programming, code reviews, design discussions, and career coaching
• Build a culture of technical rigor, ownership, and continuous learning within the team
• Help establish best engineering practices and operational excellence backed by product, engineering, and operational metrics
• Interact with Walmart engineering teams across geographies to leverage expertise and contribute to the tech community
• Showcase engineering vision through tech talks, demos, design reviews, and hands-on collaboration

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product Management and Business to drive the agenda, set priorities, and deliver solutions that improve seller experience and marketplace health
• Engage with Product Management, Data Engineering, and Platform teams to translate complex business requirements into robust, maintainable technical solutions
• Interact closely with requirements owners and business stakeholders both within your region and across the globe
• Work with senior leadership to chart out the future roadmap of the products
• Participate in hiring and help build teams that enable high-performing, agile organizations

What You'll Bring

Experience & Technical Foundation:

• 14+ years of software engineering experience with strong proficiency in object-oriented programming languages
• 5+ years of experience in systems design, algorithms, and distributed systems
• Proficiency in full-stack development with strong backend expertise in one or more of: Java, Python, C++, C#, Go, or Rust
• Hands-on experience building and operating cloud-native microservices at scale
• Proven expertise in designing and implementing APIs (REST, gRPC) and distributed system patterns
• Solid understanding of eventual consistency, idempotency, and processing semantics in event-driven systems
• Experience designing and operating services on cloud platforms (Azure, GCP, or AWS) with Kubernetes or equivalent container orchestration

Distributed Systems & Big Data:

• Deep expertise in distributed systems architecture, scalability, and reliability patterns
• Hands-on experience building large-scale data pipelines using big data technologies (Spark, Kafka, Cassandra, Hadoop, Hive, Presto, or Airflow)
• Understanding of database design, data governance, and compliance considerations
• Experience with both RDBMS and NoSQL storage systems

Platform & Technical Leadership:

• Demonstrated track record of leading technical roadmaps and influencing without authority across teams
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and accelerate their growth
• Strong communication skills for facilitating alignment between engineering and business stakeholders
• Experience setting technical standards, conducting design reviews, and establishing best practices
• Expertise in the full software development lifecycle including deployment, observability, and operational excellence

Leadership Expectations & Values

Respect for the Individual

Demonstrate and encourage respect for all; build a high-performing team; seek and embrace differences in people, cultures, ideas, and experiences; create a workplace where all associates feel seen, supported, and connected through a culture of belonging.

Act With Integrity

Maintain and promote the highest standards of integrity, ethics, and compliance; model the Walmart values and lead by example to foster our culture.

Serve our Customers/Members

Deliver expected business results while putting the customer/member first.

Strive for Excellence

Consistently raise the bar and seek to improve; demonstrate curiosity and a growth mindset.

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 expert's 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.

Work
Walmart’s culture sets us apart, and we know being together helps us innovate, learn and grow great careers. This role is based in our Bangalore office for daily work, with the flexibility for associates to manage their personal lives

Benefits

Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance. Other great perks include a host of best-in-class benefits maternity and parental leave, PTO, health benefits, and much more.

Belonging

We aim to create a culture where every associate feels valued for who they are, rooted in respect for the individual. Our goal is to foster a sense of belonging, to create opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers, and to be a Walmart for everyone.

At Walmart, our vision is "everyone included." By fostering a workplace culture where everyone is—and feels—included, everyone wins. Our associates and customers reflect the makeup of all 19 countries where we operate. By making Walmart a welcoming place where all people feel like they belong, we’re able to engage associates, strengthen our business, improve our ability to serve customers, and support the communities where we operate.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Walmart, Inc., is an Equal Opportunities 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.

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.

Master’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 3 years' experience in software engineering or related area., 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...

Block- 1, Prestige Tech Pacific Park, Sy No. 38/1, Outer Ring Rd Kadubeesanahalli , India