Principal Data Scientist: Associate AI

Job Summary

We are seeking a Principal Data Scientist to provide technical leadership and long‑term vision for next‑generation AI systems and platforms. This senior individual contributor will drive breakthrough system design and advanced solution development that transforms Walmart  role combines deep technical expertise (ML, simulation, optimization, agentic AI) with cross‑functional influence, mentoring of senior talent, and delivery of high‑impact, productionized solutions.

• Architect end‑to‑end ML/AI systems – from feature engineering through production deployment and monitoring.
• Built and shipped multiple autonomous AI agents (not just experimented with LLM APIs).
• Level 5+ on Steve Yegge’s Vibe Coding scale and can ship production systems through AI‑assisted development.
• Combine deep statistical rigor with practical business impact.

The Associate AI Experiences team applies advanced data science, machine learning, and agentic AI to solve high‑impact business problems across Walmart globally. You’ll build production agentic systems, deploy autonomous AI agents, translate complex data into actionable insights, and drive measurable business value at massive scale. Our work spans NLP, computer vision, time‑series forecasting, and multi‑agent AI systems at enterprise scale.

• Build and deploy production ML systems end‑to‑end: data pipelines, feature stores, model training, serving layers, monitoring, and feedback loops at scale.
• Provide technical vision and lead advanced development in agentic AI, reinforcement learning, and simulation.
• Architect and deploy large‑scale AI systems and autonomous AI agents – conversational assistants, predictive agents with tool‑calling, and multi‑agent orchestration systems using Lang Chain, Pydantic AI, and RAG patterns.
• Design agentic evaluation frameworks that benchmark agent performance across task completion, code quality, and multi‑step reasoning accuracy.
• Deploy NLP pipelines at enterprise scale – semantic similarity across millions of records using BERT/SBERT embeddings and vector search (FAISS).
• Lead high‑impact projects end‑to‑end; problem framing, modeling, prototyping, production architecture, and rollout.
• Author and review technical designs and standards; present findings to senior leadership.
• Mentor senior scientists and engineers on advanced modeling techniques, feature engineering, and experimentation design – raising the technical bar across teams.
• Establish best practices for model validations, experimentation, and safe deployment of AI systems.
• Influence roadmap prioritization and long‑term strategy for AI and simulation capabilities.
• Present insights to senior leadership with compelling data visualization, quantified business impact, and clear confidence intervals.

• Deep expertise in ML algorithms (XGBoost, Cat Boost, LightGBM, Random Forest, AutoML) and deep learning (PyTorch, transformer architectures).
• Production experience with NLP (BERT, SBERT, FAISS, RAG), computer vision (YOLO, CLIP), and time series forecasting (ARIMA, Prophet).
• Hands‑on experience building and orchestrating multiple AI agents with Lang Chain, RAG, tool integration, and memory management.
• Multi‑cloud ML platform proficiency – AWS Sage Maker AND GCP (Vertex AI, Big Query, Big Query ML).
• Strong Python skills (Pandas, Num Py, Scikit-learn) with containerization (Docker) and MLOps practices.
• Advanced statistical analysis, experiment design, and causal inference.
• Experience deploying production‑grade AI systems at scale.
• Ability to translate complex analytical results into clear business recommendations for non‑technical stakeholders.

• Master's degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 5+ years’ experience in data science or Machine Learning roles with demonstrated impact.

• PhD in AI, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Information Technology, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Econometrics, or related field with relevant industry experience.
• Data science, machine learning, optimization models, publications or active…