Data Scientist

Position Summary

We’re looking for a Staff Data Scientist to design and build advanced retrieval, relevance, ranking, bidding, targeting recommendation models to ensure a good Walmart customer and advertiser experience that powers critical advertising business growth. You’ll build and deploy state‑of‑the‑art prediction models (classical + ML + deep learning), drive explainability and trust (XAI), and explore next‑generation approaches such as foundation models for unifying all different tasks.

You’ll partner closely with engineering, product, and stakeholders to deliver measurable impact at scale.

• Design and deploy statistically and ML models to address high-impact financial forecasting needs, ensuring alignment with Walmart’s business objectives.
• Perform statistical analysis across large data sets and within defined segments to empower data‑driven decisions.
• Own end‑to‑end predictive model lifecycle, including scoping, feature engineering, model development, experimentation, monitoring and ongoing performance optimizations.
• Develop advanced time series solutions using:
  • Statistical methods (ETS, ARIMA/SARIMA, State Space Models)
  • ML approaches (GBMs, Random Forests, linear/elastic models with engineered time features)
  • Deep learning and foundation models (FM, MMOE, PLE, HSTU)
  • Probabilistic forecasting and uncertainty quantification (quantile regression, Bayesian approaches, conformal prediction, prediction intervals)
• Establish strong evaluation and monitoring: backtesting, leakage prevention, stability checks, drift detection, calibration of uncertainty, and post‑deployment performance tracking.
• Drive best practices in MLOps and production readiness: reproducible pipelines, scalable training/inference, model versioning, and governance.
• Build agentic workflows to enable conversational agentic framework for explainability and scenario planning.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional partners including Product, Business, Data Science and Engineering.
• Mentor other data scientists, set modeling standards, and influence technical direction across teams.

• 8+ years in data science / applied ML (or PhD + 5 years), with deep hands‑on exposure to forecasting and predictive modeling.
• Demonstrated experience delivering production‑grade ML models with measurable business outcomes.
• Hands‑on experience with deep learning frameworks (PyTorch or Tensor Flow) and modern architectures for time series.
• Practical experience with explainable AI methods and communicating model reasoning to non‑technical stakeholders.
• Excellent coding skills in Python; strong grasp of software engineering fundamentals (testing, packaging, code reviews).
• Ability to translate ambiguous business problems into rigorous modeling plans and deliver results.
• High attention to detail and an ownership mindset in managing multiple high‑impact projects.

• Experience with graph neural networks (PyG/DGL), spatiotemporal GNNs, or temporal graph learning.
• Experience with causal inference or decision‑focused forecasting (uplift, impact estimation, counterfactuals, policy evaluation).
• Familiarity with large‑scale data/compute:
  Spark, distributed training, feature stores, GPU workflows.
• Experience building human‑centered explainability: dashboards, driver decomposition, “why changed” analysis, model cards.
• Publications, patents, or open‑source contributions in time series, XAI, or graph learning.

• Proficiency in Python, SQL and data visualization tools.
• Experience using PyTorch/Tensor Flow; scikit‑learn; XGBoost/Light
  
  GBM and other models for production‑grade models.
• Experience building solutions with time series libraries (stats models, Prophet‑like tools, etc.).
• Interest and exposure to explainability: SHAP, Integrated Gradients, permutation importance, counterfactuals.
• Nice to have:
  • Experience with data platforms like Spark/Databricks, Airflow, Kubernetes.
  • MLOps/Agent Ops experience in deployment model and/or agentic workflows at scale.

Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance. Other great perks include 401(k) match, stock purchase plan, paid maternity and parental leave, PTO, multiple health plans, and more.

Salary Range: $143,000 – $286,000 annually. Additional compensation may include annual or quarterly performance bonuses and stock options.

1345 Crossman Ave, Sunnyvale, CA , United States

Walmart, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity 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.