USA) Principal, Software Engineer

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

What you'll do...

Join Walmart as a Principal Software Engineer for the Colony Platform within our AI & Data organization and help make it trivially easy for associates - engineers, data scientists, and builders- to go from idea to AI-based solutions quickly, safely, and cost effectively. At Walmart, we operate at Fortune #1 scale. Our challenges are complex, global, and deeply meaningful. Here, you'll do the best work of your life - work that helps people save money and live better.

About AI & Data The AI & Data organization in Walmart Global Tech is building a platform-first ecosystem that centralizes enterprise data, provides AI foundations, and delivers intuitive AI solutions for all personas. We are enabling AI at enterprise scale - responsibly, securely, and reliably. Position Summary As a Principal Software Engineer, you will serve as a senior technical authority and hands-on architect across critical AI & Data platforms.

You will shape system architecture, influence engineering standards, and drive platform strategy that supports AI-powered experiences across Walmart globally. Colony is an agentic AI framework designed to orchestrate complex, AI-driven workflows in a multi-tenant environment. It provides a robust, API-driven process execution layer built on the Camunda Zeebe engine. You design agent behavior as visual workflows that are executed by a distributed process engine.

This includes performance, reliability, safety of execution, and ship a great end-user experience. This role requires deep expertise in distributed systems, platform engineering, and AI-enabled architectures - combined with the ability to influence across teams and elevate technical rigor enterprise-wide. You will:

* Own high-impact architectural decisions

* Drive scalable, resilient system design

* Prototype and product ionize advanced AI-enabled capabilities

* Mentor senior engineers and act as a force multiplier

* Balance long-term platform sustainability with near-term business outcomes

What You'll Do Architecture & Technical Strategy

* Define and evolve reference architectures for distributed systems, AI pipelines, and platform services.

* Drive system design reviews ensuring scalability, reliability, observability, and cost efficiency.

* Design systems that integrate cleanly with enterprise data and AI foundations.

* Make thoughtful design trade-offs balancing long-term platform integrity with short-term delivery needs.

* Improve the reliability and quality of the end-to-end system across local client + gateway + external APIs (debugging, telemetry, performance tuning).

* Implement security and compliance guardrails for local execution (least privilege, secrets handling, auditing, allow lists/deny lists where appropriate).

* Build comprehensive testing: unit, integration, contract tests for tool schemas, and end-to-end tests for common workflows.

* Drive engineering excellence: code reviews, design docs, mentoring, incident follow-ups, and raising operational standards.

AI-Enabled Platform Engineering

* Lead development of AI-powered services, agent workflows, and internal builder platforms.

* Prototype and product ionize GenAI-enabled capabilities in secure, governed environments.

* Champion responsible AI patterns, including guardrails and human-in-the-loop design.

* Design, build, and operate core agent orchestration components (UI → agent core logic → tool manager → local tools).

* Develop and maintain local tool plugins (Python-based) that perform actions on behalf of the user (file read/list/edit, command execution, integrations).

* Build robust tool-call validation and execution (schema enforcement, parameter validation, retries, error handling, idempotency, and safe defaults).

* Integrate with enterprise APIs via HTTPS (e.g., Microsoft Graph) for workflows like user lookup, email/calendar actions, and related productivity scenarios.

Hands-On Technical Leadership

* Contribute code and prototypes for complex, high-risk, or ambiguous initiatives.

* Raise engineering standards driving engineering excellence through rigorous code reviews, operational reviews, and architectural discussions.

* Implement security and compliance guardrails for local execution (least privilege, secrets handling, auditing, allow lists/deny lists where appropriate).

* Improve CI/CD, reliability engineering, and platform observability practices.

* Establish performance, reliability, and cost benchmarks, E2E across local client + gateway + external APIs (debugging, telemetry, performance tuning).

Cross-Functional Influence

* Partner with product, governance, enterprise data, and infrastructure teams.

* Translate complex technical concepts into business-impact narratives.

* Drive consensus across senior engineers and engineering leaders.

* Influence multi-team roadmaps and reduce architectural fragmentation.

Mentorship & Technical Multiplication

* Mentor senior engineers and emerging technical leaders.

* Elevate architectural maturity across teams.

* Create…