Principal, Software Engineer

Position Summary... What you'll do... Principal Software Engineer – Data Security Platform About the Team We are building Walmart’s next-generation Data Security Platform, responsible for protecting data across Walmart’s systems, applications, and associates. Data security is one of the most critical challenges for modern enterprises, requiring a careful balance between security, privacy, compliance, and productivity. Our platform provides comprehensive capabilities including:  Authentication and Identity Management  Authorization and Access Control  Audit Logging and Compliance  Data Protection and Least-Privilege Enforcement As part of this team, you will design and build highly scalable distributed systems that protect petabytes of data at rest and in motion, across both structured and unstructured data sources. You will solve complex engineering challenges involving real-time policy enforcement, large-scale data processing, and low- latency access control while ensuring a seamless user experience. What You’ll Do  Architect and build large-scale distributed systems for enterprise data security.  Design highly scalable and resilient services for authentication, authorization, auditing, and data protection.  Develop solutions that enforce fine-grained access controls with minimal performance overhead.  Drive technical strategy and influence cross-functional engineering teams and stakeholders.  Optimize system performance, reliability, scalability, and operational excellence.  Mentor engineers and establish engineering best practices across the organization.  Lead critical design reviews and contribute to long-term platform architecture. Required Qualifications Technical Expertise  10+ years of software engineering experience building large-scale distributed systems.  5+ years of experience designing and architecting complex distributed systems in production environments.  10+ years of hands-on experience with Java and Go.  Deep understanding of JVM internals, memory management, garbage collection, thread management, and performance tuning.  Strong expertise in concurrent and multithreaded programming.  10+ years of experience with SQL and NoSQL databases.  Deep understanding of storage engines, indexing, query optimization, database internals, and performance tuning.  Strong hands-on coding skills with a track record of delivering production- quality software. Leadership & Problem Solving  Exceptional analytical, debugging, and problem-solving skills.  Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and drive alignment across engineering teams and senior stakeholders.  Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to influence technical decisions through data-driven discussions.  Experience mentoring engineers and driving engineering excellence at scale. Preferred Qualifications  Experience building security, identity, authorization, governance, or data protection platforms.  Experience working with large-scale cloud-native systems and microservices architectures.  Familiarity with distributed data processing frameworks and big data technologies.  Experience operating systems at petabyte scale. Platform Engineering Leadership: Delivers platform capabilities across a technical area or sub-organization, including shared infrastructure, reusable tooling, and scalable ML frameworks (for example, CI/CD pipelines, SDKs, model runtimes, feature stores). Aligns engineering efforts with roadmap milestones and domain strategies, ensuring execution supports long-term platform evolution. Applies cloud-native architecture principles and best practices in distributed system design to enable high availability, scalability, and fault tolerance. Technical Execution & Lifecycle Management: Drives the full software development lifecycle across multiple teams—including coding, testing, CI/CD deployment, observability, monitoring, incident response, and maintenance. Implements distributed architectures optimized for real-time data processing, AI/ML integration, and cross-service reliability. Maintains architectural decision records (ADRs) to ensure traceability, alignment, and transparency in technical planning and tradeoffs. AI/ML Integration & Product Development: Architects and builds intelligent software systems and AI-enhanced applications that serve millions of customers and associates. Leads the integration of AI agents capable of multi-step reasoning and tool- augmented tasks using technologies such as Python, Java, JavaScript, Dart, Rust, and C++. Applies model-driven design and leverage tools like GitHub Copilot to increase development velocity and quality. Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Provides strategic technical guidance and mentorship to Engineers and their teams, fostering engineering excellence and innovation. Influences architectural decisions and design patterns across teams to promote standardization, maintainability, and system interoperability. Showcases Walmart’s engineering vision through knowledge sharing, community leadership, and by publishing technical articles and insights internally and externally. Customer/Associate Problem Definition & Metrics: Engages with cross-functional stakeholders to deeply understand business and user needs. Breaks down ambiguous problems into actionable technical requirements and defines clear operational, engineering, and customer-centric metrics to measure success and value delivery. Technical Ownership: Demonstrates responsibility for deliverables, ensuring solutions meet quality standards and business objectives. Takes initiative to resolve issues and drive projects to completion. Technical Judgment: Applies sound reasoning to make informed technical decisions, balancing trade- offs and considering long-term impacts on system architecture and business goals. Change Agility: Adapts quickly to change, embraces new technologies, and understands the broader system context. Anticipates the downstream effects of technical choices and integrates feedback to improve outcomes. Collaboration: Works effectively across teams, openly shares knowledge, and communicates complex ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Innovation & Continuous Improvement: Proactively seeks opportunities to enhance processes, tools, and products. Encourages experimentation and learning to drive ongoing improvement. Drives the execution of multiple business plans and projects by identifying customer and operational needs; developing and communicating business plans and priorities; removing barriers and obstacles that impact performance; providing resources; identifying performance standards; measuring progress and adjusting performance accordingly; developing contingency plans; and demonstrating adaptability and supporting continuous learning. Provides supervision and development opportunities for associates by selecting and training; mentoring; assigning duties; building a team-based work environment; establishing performance expectations and conducting regular performance evaluations; providing recognition and rewards; coaching for success and improvement; and promoting a belonging mindset in workplace. Promotes and supports company policies, procedures, mission, values, and standards of ethics and integrity by training and providing direction to others in their use and application; ensuring compliance with them; and utilizing and supporting the Open Door Policy. Ensures business needs are being met by evaluating the ongoing effectiveness of current plans, programs, and initiatives; consulting with business partners, managers, co-workers, or other key stakeholders; soliciting, evaluating, and applying suggestions for improving efficiency and cost effectiveness; and participating in and supporting community outreach events. Software Development, Software Architecture, Solution Design, Continuous Integration Respect the Individual: Demonstrates and encourages respect for all; builds a high-performing team; seeks, and embraces differences in people, cultures, ideas and experiences; creates a workplace where all associates feel seen, supported and connected through culture of belonging so associates thrive and perform; drives a positive associate and customer/member experience for all; identifies, attracts, and retains the best team members. Respect the Individual: Creates a discipline and focus around developing talent, through feedback, coaching, mentoring, and developmental opportunities; promotes an environment allowing everyone to bring their best selves to work; empowers associates and partners to act in the best interest of the customer/member and company; and regularly recognizes others’ contributions and accomplishments. Respect the Individual: Builds strong and trusting relationships with team members and business partners; works collaboratively and cross-functionally to achieve objectives; and communicates and listens attentively, with energy and positivity to motivate, influence, and inspire commitment and action. Act with Integrity: Maintains and promotes the highest standards of integrity, ethics and compliance; models the Walmart values and leads by example to foster our culture; supports Walmart’s goal of becoming a regenerative company by making a positive impact for associates, customers, and the world around us (e.g., creating a sense of belonging, eliminating waste, participating in local giving). Act with Integrity: Follows the law, our code of conduct and company policies, and sets expectations for others to do the same; promotes an environment where associates feel comfortable sharing concerns and reinforces our culture of non- retaliation; listens to concerns raised by associates. takes action and encourages others to do the same; holds self and others accountable for achieving results in a way that is consistent with our values. Act with Integrity: Acts as an altruistic servant leader and is consistently humble, self-aware, honest, and transparent. Serve our Customers and Members: Delivers expected business results while putting the customer/member first and consistently applying an omni-merchant mindset and acts with an Every Day Low-Cost mindset to drive value and Every Day Low Prices for customers/members. Serve our Customers and Members: Adopts a holistic perspective that considers data, analytics, customer/member insights, and different parts of the business when making plans and shaping the team’s strategy. Strive for Excellence: Consistently raises the bar and seeks to improve; demonstrates curiosity and a growth mindset; seeks feedback, asks thoughtful questions, fosters an environment that supports learning, innovation, and learning from mistakes, and intelligent risk-taking; and exhibits resilience in the face of setbacks. Strive for Excellence: Seeks and implements continuous improvements and encourages the team to leverage new digital tools and ways of working. 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 you receive depends on your job classification and length of employment. It will meet or exceed the requirements of paid sick leave laws, where applicable. For information about PTO, see Live Better U is a Walmart-paid education benefit program for full-time and part-time associates in Walmart and Sam's Club facilities. Programs range from high school completion to bachelor's degrees, including English Language Learning and short-form certificates. Tuition, books, and fees are completely paid for by Walmart. Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on your job classification and length of employment. Benefits are subject to change and may be subject to a specific plan or program terms. For information about benefits and eligibility, see One.Walmart. The annual salary range for this position is $143,000.00 - $286,000.00 Additional compensation includes annual or quarterly performance bonuses. Additional compensation for certain positions may also include : - Stock ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ‎ Minimum Qualifications... Outlined below are the required minimum qualifications for this position. If none are listed, there are no minimum qualifications. Option 1: Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 5 years’ experience in software engineering or related area. Option 2: 7 years’ experience in software engineering or related area. Preferred Qualifications... Outlined below are the optional preferred qualifications for this position. If none are listed, there are no preferred qualifications. Master’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 3 years' experience in software engineering or related area., We value candidates with a background in creating inclusive digital experiences, demonstrating knowledge in implementing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standards, assistive technologies, and integrating digital accessibility seamlessly. The ideal candidate would have knowledge of accessibility best practices and join us as we continue to create accessible products and services following Walmart’s accessibility standards and guidelines for supporting an inclusive culture. Primary Location... 1345 Crossman Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1114, United States of America Walmart and its subsidiaries are committed to maintaining a drug-free workplace and has a no tolerance policy regarding the use of illegal drugs and alcohol on the job. This policy applies to all employees and aims to create a safe and productive work environment. About Walmart: Fifty years ago, Sam Walton started a single mom-and-pop shop and transformed it into the world's biggest retailer. Since those founding days, one thing has remained consistent: our commitment to helping our customers save money so they can live better. Today, we're reinventing the shopping experience and our associates are at the heart of it. You'll play a crucial role in shaping the future of retail, improving millions of lives around the world. This is that place where your passions meet purpose. Join our family and create a career you're proud of.