Principal Data Scientist, Autonomous AI & Production ML

Position Summary...

What you'll do...Principal, Data Scientist – Code Puppy

AI & Data | Walmart Global Tech Position Summary Join the Associate AI Experiences team to apply advanced data science, machine learning, and agentic AI to solve high‑impact business problems across Walmart’s global operations. You will build production ML systems, deploy autonomous AI agents, and translate complex data into actionable insights that drive measurable business value at massive scale. You will be a great fit if you:

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

About the Team Our team builds intelligent agents and ML‑powered solutions that make associates’ jobs easier, faster, and more fulfilling across stores, fulfillment centers, distribution centers, and the home office. We leverage the Element LLM Gateway to safely access state‑of‑the‑art language models while keeping all data within Walmart’s network. Our work spans NLP, computer vision, time‑series forecasting, and multi‑agent AI systems at enterprise scale.

What You’ll Do

• Build and deploy production ML systems end‑to‑end, including data pipelines, feature stores, model training, serving layers, monitoring, and feedback loops at scale
• Architect and deploy autonomous AI agents, including conversational assistants, predictive agents with tool calling, and multi‑agent orchestration systems using Lang Chain, Pydantic AI, and RAG patterns
• Design agentic evaluation frameworks to benchmark agent performance across task completion, code quality, and multi‑step reasoning accuracy
• Deploy NLP pipelines at enterprise scale, enabling semantic similarity across millions of records using BERT/SBERT embeddings and vector search (FAISS)
• Engineer computer vision systems for real‑time inference (YOLO, RT‑DETR, CLIP) with multi‑GPU training optimization
• Build time‑series forecasting models that drive inventory optimization, demand planning, and financial projections across multiple geographies
• Present insights to senior leadership using compelling data visualizations, quantified business impact, and clearly defined confidence intervals
• Mentor team members on advanced modeling techniques, feature engineering, and experimental design
• Travel internationally to support Walmart operations in Canada, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Europe, and the UK

What You’ll Bring

• Deep expertise in ML algorithms (XGBoost, Cat Boost, Light
  
  GBM, 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 across AWS Sage Maker and GCP (Vertex AI, Big Query, Big Query ML)
• Strong Python skills (Pandas, Num Py, scikit‑learn), containerization expertise (Docker), and MLOps best practices
• Advanced knowledge of statistical analysis, experimental design, and causal inference
• Proven ability to translate complex analytical results into clear, actionable business recommendations for non‑technical stakeholders

At Walmart, we offer competitive pay as well as performance-based bonus awards and other great benefits for a happier mind, body, and wallet. Health benefits include medical, vision and dental coverage. Financial benefits include 401(k), stock purchase and company-paid life insurance. Paid time off benefits include PTO (including sick leave), parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.

You will also receive PTO and/or PPTO that can be used for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes. The amount…