Distinguished Software Engineer – AI/ML

. Shape the long-term AI engineering roadmap for Walmart Ads, aligning with the org vision of becoming the definitive AI-native omnichannel RMN.

Posted 4/3/2026full-timeSunnyvale • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesSeniorLead💰 $169,000 - $338,000 per yearWebsite

Tools & technologies

AWSAzureCloudDistributed SystemsGoGoogle Cloud PlatformKafkaPythonPyTorchReactRustTensorflow

Key responsibilities & impact

Shape the long-term AI engineering roadmap for Walmart Ads, aligning with the org vision of becoming the definitive AI-native omnichannel RMN.
Lead the strategy for pre-training, fine-tuning, and aligning (RLHF/DPO) open-weight foundation models explicitly for the retail media domain.
Architect highly scalable Retrieval-Augmented Generation pipelines that ground LLM outputs in real-time inventory, pricing, and hyper-local store data.
Architect and deploy autonomous AI agents capable of complex reasoning, tool-use, and multi-step planning.
Collaborate cross-functionally with Ads Product, Data Science, and Engineering to integrate LLMs & agentic AI into core ad surfaces (Search, Display, Video, In-Store) and omnichannel measurement.
Drive inference optimization (quantization, vLLM, TensorRT) to ensure generative models are cost-efficient and meet the strict ultra-low latency requirements (sub-100ms) of programmatic ad exchanges and real-time bidding (RTB) environments.
Ensure all AI capabilities are cleanly decoupled yet tightly integrated with core ad servers, SSPs, DSPs, and yield management engines handling millions of queries per second (QPS).

What you’ll need

PhD or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or related field.
12+ years of ML engineering experience, with at least 5+ years operating at a Principal, Staff, or Distinguished level in a high-scale tech environment.
Deep hands-on expertise in training, fine-tuning, and deploying Large Language Models and Foundation Models into production.
Proven track record of designing complex systems using LLM orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex), reasoning frameworks (Chain-of-Thought, ReAct), and multi-agent architectures.
Strong background in designing highly available, low-latency distributed systems (handling 100K+ QPS) using cloud-native architectures (GCP, Azure, or AWS).
Expert-level proficiency in Python, Go, Rust, or C++, alongside modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).
Experience with scalable vector databases (Milvus, Pinecone), feature stores, and real-time streaming pipelines (Kafka, Flink).
Strong foundational knowledge of programmatic advertising, Real-Time Bidding (RTB), click-through rate (CTR) prediction, and dynamic creative optimization.
Patents or publications in top-tier AI conferences (NeurIPS, ICML) are a strong plus.

Comp & perks

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.
Live Better U is a Walmart-paid education benefit program for full-time and part-time associates in Walmart and Sam's Club facilities.

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Hard Skills & Tools

Machine LearningLarge Language ModelsFoundation ModelsPythonGoRustC++PyTorchJAXTensorFlow

Soft Skills

leadershipcollaborationstrategic thinkingcomplex problem solving

Certifications

PhDMaster’s degree