Principal, Data Scientist

Position Summary

Join the Associate AI Experiences team to apply advanced data science, machine learning, and agentic AI to solve high‑impact business problems across Walmart’s global operations. You will build production ML systems, deploy autonomous AI agents, and translate complex data into actionable insights that drive measurable business value at massive scale.

What You’ll Do

• Build and deploy production ML systems end‑to‑end, including data pipelines, feature stores, model training, serving layers, monitoring, and feedback loops at scale.
• Architect and deploy autonomous AI agents, including conversational assistants, predictive agents with tool calling, and multi‑agent orchestration systems using LangChain, Pydantic AI, and RAG patterns.
• Design agentic evaluation frameworks to benchmark agent performance across task completion, code quality, and multi‑step reasoning accuracy.
• Deploy NLP pipelines at enterprise scale, enabling semantic similarity across millions of records using BERT/SBERT embeddings and vector search (FAISS).
• Engineer computer vision systems for real‑time inference (YOLO, RT‑DETR, CLIP) with multi‑GPU training optimization.
• Build time‑series forecasting models that drive inventory optimization, demand planning, and financial projections across multiple geographies.
• Present insights to senior leadership using compelling data visualizations, quantified business impact, and clearly defined confidence intervals.
• Mentor team members on advanced modeling techniques, feature engineering, and experimental design.
• Travel internationally to support Walmart operations in Canada, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Europe, and the UK.

What You’ll Bring

• Deep expertise in ML algorithms (XGBoost, CatBoost, LightGBM, Random Forest, AutoML) and deep learning (PyTorch, transformer architectures).
• Production experience with NLP (BERT, SBERT, FAISS, RAG), computer vision (YOLO, CLIP), and time‑series forecasting (ARIMA, Prophet).
• Hands‑on experience building and orchestrating multiple AI agents with LangChain, RAG, tool integration, and memory management.
• Multi‑cloud ML platform proficiency across AWS SageMaker and GCP (Vertex AI, BigQuery, BigQuery ML).
• Strong Python skills (Pandas, NumPy, scikit‑learn), containerization expertise (Docker), and MLOps best practices.
• Advanced knowledge of statistical analysis, experimental design, and causal inference.
• Proven ability to translate complex analytical results into clear, actionable business recommendations for non‑technical stakeholders.

Benefits

We offer competitive pay, performance‑based bonuses, medical, vision, dental, and life‑insurance coverage, 401(k) with company match and stock‑purchase plan, paid time off (including sick leave, parental leave, and jury duty), short‑term and long‑term disability, company discounts, military leave pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and the Live Better U education benefit program covering tuition and books.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology or related field and 5 years’ experience in an analytics‑related field, or
• Master’s degree in a related field and 3 years’ experience in analytics, or
• 7 years’ experience in analytics or a related field.

Preferred Qualifications

• Data science, machine learning, optimization models, or PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Operations Research, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or Econometrics.
• Publications or active peer review in related journals or conferences.
• Successful completion of assessments in Python, Spark, Scala, or R.
• Experience with open‑source frameworks (scikit‑learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Background in creating inclusive digital experiences, knowledge of WCAG 2.2 AA standards, assistive technologies, and integration of digital accessibility.

Primary Location

703 Associate Dr, Bentonville, AR 72716, United States

EEO & Workplace Policy

Walmart and its subsidiaries are committed to maintaining a drug‑free workplace and enforce a no‑tolerance policy regarding the use of illegal drugs and alcohol. We are an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.