Principal Data Scientist

Walmart

Principal Data Scientist building Walmart's AI-powered eCommerce search and personalization systems. Leading large-scale ML architecture, Generative AI applications, experimentation, and scientific mentorship.

Posted 8/14/2026full-timeSunnyvale • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $143,000 - $286,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in designing and deploying AI-powered Search and Personalization systems, with a strong focus on machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI applications. Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and drive technical architecture decisions to achieve measurable business outcomes.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Machine Learning Systems DesignDeep Learning and Transformer ArchitecturesGenerative AI ApplicationLarge-Scale Spark-Based ML PipelinesSearch and Personalization Expertise

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Machine LearningDeep LearningGenerative AIPythonScalaPyTorchSparkA/B TestingCausal InferenceModel Serving

Soft Skills

Excellent CommunicationLeadershipCross-Functional Collaboration

Tools & Technologies

TensorFlowScikit-learnRAGRLHFBehavioral Signals

Industry Keywords

SearchInformation RetrievalRankingRecommendationsPersonalization

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

PythonPyTorchScalaScikit-LearnSparkTensorflow

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Lead the design, development, and deployment of AI-powered Search and Personalization systems serving Walmart's global eCommerce platforms
Own end-to-end design and delivery of ML systems for Search ranking, query understanding, retrieval, recommendations, and real-time personalization
Build and productionize deep learning and Transformer-based models for relevance, intent classification, and semantic matching
Apply Generative AI and LLMs, including RAG and fine-tuning, to improve query understanding and product discovery
Design large-scale feature engineering and training pipelines handling petabyte-scale catalog and behavioral signals
Define experimentation strategies, offline evaluation frameworks, and online/offline metric alignment for Search and Personalization systems
Drive technical architecture decisions and influence the long-term AI roadmap
Mentor senior scientists and establish team standards for model development and production deployment
Partner with Product and Engineering to turn discovery problems into measurable customer and business outcomes
Work with Ads and Sparky, Walmart's AI shopping assistant, on product discovery science

Requirements

What you’ll need

Bachelor's degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field and 5 years' experience in an analytics-related field (Option 1)
Master's degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field and 3 years' experience in an analytics-related field (Option 2)
7 years' experience in an analytics or related field as an alternative qualification (Option 3)
Proven track record in Search, Information Retrieval, Ranking, Recommendations, or Personalization at production scale
Hands-on experience with PyTorch and Transformer architectures for relevance modeling, semantic search, or multi-task learning
Practical experience applying Generative AI to real products, including RAG, instruction fine-tuning, or RLHF
Strong engineering skills in Python and Scala
Experience building large-scale Spark-based ML pipelines
Knowledge of causal inference, A/B testing, interleaving, and offline/online metric alignment
Experience operationalizing ML systems at scale, including model serving, drift monitoring, and continuous training
Excellent communication skills and ability to lead multi-quarter technical initiatives across cross-functional teams
Preferred qualifications include data science, machine learning, optimization models, publications or active peer review, and open-source frameworks such as scikit-learn, TensorFlow, and Torch

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive pay
Performance-based bonus awards
Medical, vision, and dental coverage
401(k)
Stock purchase
Company-paid life insurance
Paid time off (PTO), including sick leave
Parental leave
Family care leave
Bereavement leave
Jury duty leave
Voting leave
Short-term and long-term disability
Company discounts
Military Leave Pay
Adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement
PTO and/or PPTO for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes
Live Better U Walmart-paid education benefit program
Tuition, books, and fees completely paid for eligible education programs
Annual or quarterly performance bonuses
Stock compensation for certain positions