Staff, Software Engineer – Conversational AI
Company: Walmart
Location: Bellevue
Posted on: February 12, 2026
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Job Description:
Position Summary What you'll do Cortex Team is Walmart’s core
A.I. conversational platform, powering the vision of delivering the
world’s best personal assistants to Walmart’s customers, accessible
via natural voice commands, text messages, rich UI interactions,
and a mix of all of the above via multi-modal experiences. We
believe conversations are a natural and powerful user interface for
interacting with technology and enable a richer customer
experiences – both online and in-store. We are building and
designing the next generation of Natural Language Understanding
(NLU) services that other teams can easily integrate and leverage,
and build rich experiences: from pure voice and text shopping
assistants (Siri, Sparky ), to customer care channels, to mobile
apps with rich, intertwined, multi-modal interaction modes (
Me@Walmart ). Interested in diving in? We need solid engineers with
the talent and expertise required to design, build, improve and
evolve our capabilities in at least some of the following areas:
Service oriented architecture in charge of exposing our NLU
capabilities at scale, and enabling increasingly sophisticated
model orchestration. Since the service takes in traffic for a large
set of Walmart customers (that is 80% of American households!), you
will get to solve non trivial challenges in terms of service
scalability and availability. You will design and build the
primitives to efficiently orchestrate model-serving microservices,
taking into account their dependencies, and improving the combined
latency and robustness of such microservices (e.g. fan out in
parallel to N services for a single request, and reply with
whichever gives the fastest answer). You will also bake-in
functionality which can drive improved machine learning modeling
and experimental design, such as A/B testing. Model serving and
operations There is a constant tension between model improvements
(more computations) and model serving latency. So, we are always in
a quest of crunching more numbers, while preserving our SLAs, and
controlling the operational costs. You will guide our efforts to
always find the best tradeoffs in terms of architecture, tooling
(Tensorflow serving? / VLLM? / Triton?) and infrastructure (CPU? /
GPU?, GCP? / Azure?) for model serving – based on the latest model
developments and product requirements. In particular, you will
drive principled and scientific load-testing efforts, to clearly
identify the tradeoffs at hands, and tune/optimize the
model-serving stack. If interested, you will also get some
opportunity to work on prompt engineering and agentic systems.
Tooling, infrastructure and pipelines for reproducible workflow and
models, enabling rapid innovation across the entire product
lifecycle. You will author and maintain pipelines that safely build
and deploy models to production via continuous deployment. You will
achieve scalable and efficient resource management capabilities
(cloud infrastructure). You will provide robust and built-in
diagnostics for quality control throughout. You will integrate – or
build – labeling tools which can seamlessly integrate at the heart
of our conversation data store (GCP, BigQuery) and intertwine
multiple labeling sources of various confidence levels. Come at the
right time, and you will have an enormous opportunity to make a
massive impact on the design, architecture, and implementation of
an innovative, mission critical product, used every day, by people
you know, and which customers love. As part of the emerging tech
group, you will also have the additional opportunity of building
demos, proof of concepts, creating white papers, writing blogs,
etc. Note that this is not a fully remote job, you are required to
come to the office (currently at least 2 days a week). Minimum
Qualifications Solid data skills, sound computer-science
fundamentals, and strong programming experience. Deep hands-on
technical expertise in full-stack development. Programming
experience with at least one modern language with an efficient
runtime, such as Scala, Java, C++, or C#. Experience with at least
one relational database technology such as MySQL, PostgreSQL,
Oracle, or MS SQL. Some level of fluency in Python (lingua-franca
of our data-scientists). Understanding of the challenge of
distributed data-processing at scale. Deal well with
ambiguous/undefined problems; ability to think abstractly. Ability
to take a project from scoping requirements through actual launch.
A continuous drive to explore, improve, enhance, automate, and
optimize systems and tools. Capacity to apply scientific analysis
and mathematical modeling techniques to predict, measure and
evaluate the consequences of designs and the ongoing success of our
platform. Excellent oral and written communication skills.
Bachelor’s degree or certification in Computer Science,
Engineering, Mathematics, or any other related field. Preferred
Qualifications Affinity for prompt engineering Large scale
distributed systems experience, including scalability and fault
tolerance. Experience taking a leading role in building complex
data-driven software systems successfully delivered to customers
Relentless focus on scalability, latency, performance robustness,
and cost trade-offs – especially those present in highly
virtualized, elastic, cloud-based environments. Exposure to cloud
infrastructure, such as Open Stack, Azure, GCP, or AWS as well as
infrastructure management tech (Docker, Kubernetes) Experience
building/operating highly available systems of data extraction,
ingestion, and massively parallel processing for large data sets.
In particular experience in building large scale data pipelines
using big data technologies (e.g. Spark / Kafka / Cassandra /
Hadoop / Hive / BigQuery / Presto / Airflow). Hands-on expertise in
many disparate technologies, typically ranging from front-end user
interfaces through to back-end systems and all points in between.
Familiarity with Machine Learning concepts & processes Masters or
PhD in Computer Science, Physics, Engineering, Math, or equivalent.
About Walmart Global Tech Imagine working in an environment where
one line of code can make life easier for hundreds of millions of
people. That’s what we do at Walmart Global Tech. We’re a team of
software engineers, data scientists, cybersecurity expert's and
service professionals within the world’s leading retailer who make
an epic impact and are at the forefront of the next retail
disruption. People are why we innovate, and people power our
innovations. We are people-led and tech-empowered. We train our
team in the skillsets of the future and bring in experts like you
to help us grow. We have roles for those chasing their first
opportunity as well as those looking for the opportunity that will
define their career. Here, you can kickstart a great career in
tech, gain new skills and experience for virtually every industry,
or leverage your expertise to innovate at scale, impact millions
and reimagine the future of retail. Walmart’s culture is a
competitive advantage, and it’s fostered by being together. Working
together in person allows us to collaborate, align quickly and
innovate with greater speed. We use our campuses to create
purposeful connection rooted in deepening understanding and
investing in the development of our associates. Our hubs: Walmart
is a global company with offices across the United States and
around the world. Our global headquarters is in Bentonville,
Arkansas, with primary hubs in the San Francisco Bay area and New
York/New Jersey. Benefits: Benefits: 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 much
more. Equal Opportunity Employer: 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. The above
information has been designed to indicate the general nature and
level of work performed in the role. It is not designed to contain
or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all
responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned
to this job. The full Job Description can be made available as part
of the hiring process. 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
https://one.walmart.com/notices . 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 ? ? ?
? ? 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 4 years’ experience in
software engineering or related area. Option 2: 6 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 2 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 10500 Ne 8Th St, Bellevue, WA 98004,
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.
Keywords: Walmart, Olympia , Staff, Software Engineer – Conversational AI, Engineering , Bellevue, Washington
