Distinguished, Software Engineer

Walmart, Inc.

$130K — $260K *
Enterprise Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years in software engineering or related field.
  • Experience in architectural leadership on high-scale digital commerce platforms.
  • Advanced proficiency in Lua scripting - custom logic for Akamai, Torbit, and edge processing.
  • Proven experience with eCommerce initiatives across multiple markets (US, International, Sam's Club).
  • Strong understanding of customer lifecycle flows and system architecture.

Responsibilities

  • Lead architecture and technical strategy for core eCommerce platforms.
  • Drive execution on large eCommerce initiatives across teams and stakeholders.
  • Facilitate collaboration between engineering, product management, and business partners.
  • Define and promote target state architectures and migration strategies.
  • Enforce engineering standards and best practices in software development.
  • Improve program delivery processes for increased predictability and throughput.
  • Implement robust observability and monitoring patterns for site health.

Benefits

  • 401(k) match and stock purchase plan.
  • Paid maternity and parental leave.
  • Flexible working hours and multiple health plan options.
  • Virtual work transition with purposeful in-person collaboration.
  • Incentive awards based on performance.
Full Job Description
Position Summary...

What you'll do...
We are seeking a seasoned Distinguished, Software Engineer - Site Engineering Architect to lead the technical architecture and cross-functional delivery for our eCommerce site platforms. In this role you will own the architecture, operational model, and engineering standards that enable highly available, secure, performant, and extensible eCommerce experiences. You will partner closely with engineering, product, UX, operations and business stakeholders to define technical strategy, drive execution for large-scale initiatives (including next-generation eCommerce platform work), and continuously improve how we design, deliver and operate solutions.

This role combines deep hands-on architectural leadership with program-level influence: you will design and validate solutions, unblock engineering teams, and lead improvements to the processes and observability that govern site reliability, performance, and compliance.

What you'll do:
  • Lead architecture and technical strategy for core eCommerce site platforms (catalog, search, checkout, cart, personalization, promotions, storefront, content delivery), ensuring scalability, availability, security and extensibility.
  • Drive execution for some of the organization's largest eCommerce initiatives - own architecture decisions, tradeoffs, success criteria and delivery risks across multiple teams and stakeholders.
  • Create and sustain strong, practical collaboration between engineering, product management, UX/design, SRE and business partners so that architecture and delivery are tightly aligned with product goals and customer experience.
  • Define and evangelize target state architectures (microservices, event-driven/data-streaming, edge/ CDN strategies, serverless/K8s, API and data contracts) and migration approaches from legacy systems.
  • Establish and enforce engineering standards and best practices (API design, CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure as code, secure coding, data privacy/PCI compliance).
  • Shape and improve program delivery processes: roadmaps, planning cadences, risk frameworks, release gating, change control and cross-team dependency management to increase predictability and throughput.
  • Design and implement observability, monitoring and alerting patterns (metrics, tracing, logs, synthetic monitoring, SLIs/SLOs) to reliably measure site health and customer impact; create runbooks and operational playbooks.
  • Partner with SRE/ops to lead capacity planning, performance tuning, cost optimization and incident response improvements for site reliability and customer experience.
  • Mentor and coach technical leads and engineers on system design, performance engineering, and trade-off analysis.
  • Evaluate new technologies and third-party suppliers (search providers, payment gateways, CDNs, personalization engines) and drive technical due diligence and proof-of-concepts.
  • Ensure engineering work complies with regulatory/security standards (PCI-DSS, GDPR, internal security policies) and auditability requirements.
  • Communicate architecture and program status clearly to senior leadership and influence roadmap and investment decisions.


What you'll bring

A seasoned technical architect who combines deep hands-on platform expertise with a track record of delivering large, multi-market eCommerce site solutions. This person will have built and operated commerce platform technology and can define and deliver site engineering solutions that work reliably for Walmart U.S., International, and Sam's Club markets.

  • At least 8 years' experience in software engineering or related area.
  • Expereince with relevant technical leadership or architecture experience (software engineering, site engineering, principal/Staff architect or senior technical program/engineering lead) on high-scale digital commerce platforms.
  • Advanced proficiency in Lua scripting, including developing custom logic for Akamai and Torbit rule sets, edge processing, and traffic management.
  • Proven experience architecting and delivering eCommerce/site engineering initiatives on an active digital commerce platform, including solutions that span US, International and Sam's Club markets (localization, taxes, fulfillment, payments, and regulatory differences).
  • Deep understanding of discovery systems and customer lifecycle flows - checkout, cart, catalog, inventory, order lifecycle, returns, and seller/merchant interactions (marketplace flows preferred).Strong technical acumen: system and solution architecture, microservices and event-driven patterns, API and data contract design, caching/CDN strategies, front-end performance, and end-to-end system integrations.
  • Cloud & platform hands-on experience (AWS/GCP/Azure), containerization/Kubernetes and/or serverless, infrastructure as code (Terraform/CloudFormation), CI/CD and release automation.
  • Observability & reliability expertise: instrumentation (metrics/tracing/logs), SLI/SLO design, synthetic monitoring, incident response/runbooks, capacity planning and performance engineering.
  • Security & compliance awareness relevant to commerce (PCI-DSS, PII/GDPR, secure coding and auditability).
  • Experience with search, personalization and event/message systems (e.g., Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, personalization engines, Kafka/Kinesis) and with integrations to payments, fraud, tax, and fulfillment vendors.
  • Proven ability to operate and evolve a shared commerce stack that delivers common capabilities across multiple product lines and markets while enabling product teams to move quickly and safely.


Delivery & leadership skills
  • Strong analytical, organizational and problem-solving skills with a data-driven mindset (uses metrics and SLIs to drive decisions).
  • Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills - able to influence product, UX, SRE, merchant and business leaders across cross-functional and international settings and present technical tradeoffs to senior leadership.
  • Track record of mentoring and growing technical leads and engineers, and of driving improvements to engineering standards, tooling and ways of working.

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 duties, responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. The full Job Description can be made available as part of the hiring process.

Benefits and Perks:
Beyond competitive pay, you can receive incentive awards for your performance. Other great benefits include a 401(k) match, stock purchase plan, paid maternity and parental leave, PTO, multiple health plans, flexible working hours, and more.
We are reimagining the tech workplace by making a permanent transition to virtual work for most of our team. Of course, being together in person is an important part of our culture and shared success. Well collaborate in person at a regular cadence and with purpose.

Living the Walmart Value:
Focus on our Associates / Belonging - Identifies, attracts, and retains top talent; builds a high-performing team; embraces a culture of belonging.

Sunnyvale, California US-11657: The annual salary range for this position is $169,000.00 - $338,000.00

Bentonville, Arkansas US-10735: The annual salary range for this position is $130,000.00 - $260,000.00

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 6 years' experience in software engineering or related area.
Option 2: 8 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 4 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.

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