Principal, Software Engineer

Location: (USA) Crossman Excellence Building CA SUNNYVALE Home Office

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

Position Summary...

What you'll do...

As a Principal Data Engineer on the mGPS/Compass team, you will own how indoor positioning data flows across the platform, from events emitted by mobile SDKs and backend services, through streaming and batch pipelines, to analytics and the tools associates and engineers rely on. You will design reliable, cost-efficient, privacy-compliant data systems, write production code, and set the technical direction for the team. You will partner closely with product, positioning vendors, and partner-app teams to turn location data into measurable operational outcomes.

About the team:

The mGPS/Compass team builds Walmart's in-store positioning, mapping, and routing platform. We help customers, associates, Spark shoppers, and partner apps find items faster, navigate stores with confidence, and complete orders accurately. Our work turns indoor positioning data into meter-level location and real-time routing across thousands of stores, saving millions of hours every year. We own the full stack behind the experience. That includes the blue dot, real-time path generation, and proximity-based actions that guide users to the right item. It also includes store map generation and the item and aisle location data that connects products to places. On the client side, we ship native Android and iOS SDKs and a React Native SDK used across customer, associate, and partner apps. Behind them, our core platform services and multi-tenant capabilities serve Walmart and Sam's Club and extend to new chains and formats. Our data pipelines move events through streaming and batch processing into BigQuery, so we can measure positioning quality and operational impact with privacy and compliance built in.
Engineers here work from mobile SDKs and positioning signals through backend services to the analytics that prove the impact, and they see results in stores quickly. We run a multi-cloud environment on Azure and GCP with multi-region resilience and progressive delivery, and we partner closely with product, positioning vendors, and partner-app teams on SDK contracts, rollouts, and incident response. We value ownership, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement
What you'll do:

• Own the end-to-end data flow of the mGPS/Compass platform, from SDK and service events through streaming and batch pipelines to analytics and the tools our associates and engineers use.
• Lead technical design and architecture, including breaking a large service into well-bounded domain services with a safe, incremental migration.
• Write and review production code across data pipelines, backend services, and lightweight web tools, and set the quality bar for the team.
• Partner with product, vendors, and partner-app teams to turn indoor positioning data into measurable operational outcomes.
• Drive reliability, performance, and cost efficiency, with strong observability, privacy compliance, and on-call health.
• Lead platform engineering efforts by delivering scalable infrastructure, reusable tooling, and cloud-native architectures aligned with strategic roadmaps.
• Architect and implement AI-enhanced applications and intelligent systems supporting millions of users with real-time data processing capabilities.
• Drive scale and performance work like Kafka partitioning/throughput, API latency, cache strategy, data-pipeline cost (GCP BQ optimizations)
• Partner with product, vendors (positioning technology), and partner-app teams (mobile apps, supplier and associate tools) on SDK contracts, SLAs, rollout plans and incident response.
• Improve operational excellence by enhancing observability, alerting, canary deployments, runbooks, change-management discipline, on-call health.

What you'll bring:

• Data engineering: hands-on experience building production streaming and batch pipelines with Kafka (partitioning, retries and DLQ, idempotency) and BigQuery/SQL, with attention to cost and performance.
• Backend engineering: strong Java (Spring Boot 3.x, Java 17/21), REST API design, and relational data (PostgreSQL), with experience designing distributed, cloud-native services.
• Technical leadership: a record of leading architecture across teams, writing design docs/ADRs, and mentoring engineers at staff level.
• Demonstrated ability to apply model-driven design and leverage AI agents to enhance software solutions.
• Working knowledge of TypeScript, Node.js, and React for internal tools and admin UIs.
• Cloud-native delivery experience: Kubernetes, CI/CD, canary or progressive delivery, secrets management, and observability (metrics, tracing, alerting).
• Experience with Airflow or Spark/Dataproc-style batch workflows.
• A strong testing mindset: unit, integration, and end-to-end tests, plus contract and load testing.
• Design, build, and operate the pipelines that move Compass event data from Kafka into BigQuery and analytics, keeping them reliable, cost-efficient, and privacy-compliant.
• Write and review Java backend and React/TypeScript code for the services and tools that expose that data.
• Work with product, vendors, and partner-app teams on data contracts, rollouts, and incident follow-ups.
• Mentor engineers, lead design reviews, and improve monitoring, alerting, and runbooks.

At Sam's Club, 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, parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. 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.

- 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 company 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 Regional Pay Zone (RPZ) (based on location). At Sam's Club, 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, parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. 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.

- 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 company 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 Regional Pay Zone (RPZ) (based on location).

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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.