Distinguished, Software Engineer

Position: (USA) Distinguished, Software Engineer
Position Summary...

What you'll do...

As a Distinguished Engineer for the Colony Platform in the AI & Data organization, you will be a senior individual contributor and technical leader responsible for shaping the long-term technical vision, architecture, and engineering excellence of our enterprise-scale AI/ML systems and platforms. You will work across teams to influence complex technical decisions, embed responsible AI foundations, and deliver scalable, resilient solutions that empower builders across Walmart.

This role goes beyond hands-on engineering - it is about driving technical strategy, architecting for scale, and mentoring technical leaders to elevate engineering standards across the organization.

What You'll Do

Technical Vision & Architecture

* Define and drive the technical vision for AI/ML platforms and ecosystems that operate at enterprise scale.

* Lead architecture reviews and design principles across GenAI integrations, model serving, and intelligent pipelines.

* Set architectural standards for reliability, security, scalability, and performance that align with enterprise requirements.

* Translate complex business needs into high-impact, long-term technical roadmaps.

AI/ML Technical Leadership

* Provide hands-on technical guidance and thought leadership to multi-team engineering and data science groups.

* Influence AI/ML lifecycle practices, including model evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and observability.

* Shape patterns for safe and governed AI adoption across internal platforms.

* Lead cutting-edge prototyping and production strategies for mission-critical AI systems.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

* Partner with product, business, UX, data science, infrastructure, and governance teams to accelerate value delivery.

* Advocate engineering best practices and foster alignment across diverse technology domains.

* Influence senior stakeholders, including executives, on technical trade-offs and strategic decisions.

Engineering Excellence & Mentorship

* Raise engineering excellence by mentoring senior ICs, principal engineers, and emerging technical talent.

* Champion best practices in code quality, system reliability, CI/CD pipelines, and operational maturity.

* Sponsor and drive technical communities of practice that elevate standards across AI & Data.

What You'll Bring

Required Qualifications

* 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale, distributed software systems.

* Proven track record as a senior individual contributor driving system architecture or technical strategy.

* Deep experience with AI/ML systems productionization, model serving, orchestration, and performance considerations.

* Experience with observability: structured logging, metrics, traces, and debugging distributed flows across client + gateway.

* Strong expertise in scalable cloud-native design and platform engineering.

* Demonstrated ability to influence engineers and leaders without direct managerial authority.

* Excellent communication and technical storytelling skills, with the ability to articulate complex concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

* Experience leading AI/ML systems or platforms in a large enterprise environment.

* Experience with LLM tool-calling / agentic systems (structured tool invocation, schema validation, prompt/tool definition design, guardrails).

* Experience with schema/contract frameworks (JSON Schema, OpenAPI, Pydantic, protobuf) and backward-compatible tool evolution.

* Familiarity with responsible AI practices and governance frameworks.

* Experience with GenAI, prompt engineering patterns, or large-scale inference infrastructure.

* Proven mentorship and leadership across multiple engineering teams.

What You'll Do Day-to-Day

* Drive architectural decisions with measurable technology impact.

* Evaluate and recommend cutting-edge technologies to solve hard AI problems.

* Advocate for platform performance, reliability, and cost efficiency.

* Participate in code reviews, design sessions, and system retrospectives.

* Mentor and elevate senior engineers and technical teams across AI & Data.

Why This Role Matters

In AI & Data, we are empowering teams across Walmart to rapidly innovate with AI and data  Distinguished Engineer will be a technical compass for this effort - shaping how we build, scale, and govern AI systems that serve millions of associates and customers globally. Your impact will extend beyond a single product or platform; it will influence Walmart's engineering culture and technological future.

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…