Distinguished, Data Scientist
Walmart · Posted Oct 22
Retail, e-commerce, grocery, pharmacy, and membership warehouse services
Get a personal compatibility score
Add a resume for personal matches
About the role
Walmart Global Tech is the software engineering, data science, and cybersecurity organization within the world's leading retailer, building technology that serves hundreds of millions of customers. This Distinguished Engineer in Data Science role is a hands-on senior individual contributor position defining multi-year technical strategy and architecting large-scale ML/statistical systems across forecasting, causal inference, anomaly detection, optimization, personalization, and GenAI/LLM applications. The role partners with VP-level stakeholders and engineering teams to operationalize data science and ML at enterprise scale.
What you will do
- Set the technical vision and multi-year roadmap for data science and applied ML across multiple product lines, ensuring alignment with enterprise data and AI strategy.
- Architect and guide the build of large-scale ML/statistical systems (forecasting, causal inference, anomaly detection, optimization, personalization, GenAI/LLM applications) that operate reliably in production at Walmart scale.
- Act as the top technical escalation point for the hardest, most ambiguous data science problems spanning multiple teams, markets, and data domains (e.g., CA/MX international parity, cross-market calculation standardization).
- Partner directly with VPs, Senior Directors, and Product leadership to translate business strategy into technical roadmaps, and to make build-vs-buy, platform, and architecture trade-off decisions with enterprise-wide consequences.
- Mentor and raise the technical bar for Principal and Staff Data Scientists/Engineers across the org; conduct design and code reviews that set the standard for rigor.
- Drive the adoption of modern MLOps, experimentation, and responsible-AI practices (reproducibility, model monitoring, bias/fairness evaluation, data quality SLAs).
- Identify and de-risk technical blockers before they become executive escalations — proactively surfacing risk, trade-offs, and mitigation paths to leadership.
- Represent Walmart's data science capability externally and internally: publications, patents, conference talks, and internal technical guilds/communities of practice.
- Partner with Data Engineering, Platform, and Infra teams to ensure the underlying data foundation (ingestion, quality, lineage, governance) can support advanced analytics at scale.
Skills used in this role
What the employer is looking for
- 12+ years of professional experience in data science, applied machine learning, or statistics, including demonstrated enterprise-scale production impact.
- Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field (or equivalent practical experience).
- Deep, hands-on expertise in statistical modeling, machine learning, and/or causal inference, with a track record of shipping models/systems that materially moved business metrics at scale.
- Proven experience architecting and operating large-scale, distributed data/ML systems (e.g., Spark, distributed training, feature stores, streaming pipelines).
- Strong software engineering fundamentals — production-quality Python/Scala/SQL, testing, CI/CD, and cloud platforms (GCP, Azure, or AWS).
- Demonstrated ability to influence and align VP/SVP-level stakeholders and engineering organizations without direct authority.
- A track record of mentoring senior (Staff/Principal-level) engineers and data scientists.
- Experience in retail, supply chain, or omnichannel commerce data domains (demand forecasting, inventory, OTIF, pricing, personalization).
- Experience applying LLMs / GenAI to enterprise data products (RAG, agents, evaluation frameworks, guardrails).
- Published research, granted patents, or recognized external thought leadership in ML/AI.
- Experience operating across international markets with varying data maturity and regulatory constraints (e.g., US, Canada, Mexico).
- Prior experience as a technical founder, chief architect, or Distinguished/Fellow-level engineer at another large-scale technology company.
- Minimum Qualifications:Option 1: Bachelor's degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology or related field and 6 years' experience in an analytics related field. Option 2: Master's degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology or related field and 4 years' experience in an analytics related field. Option 3: 8 years' experience in an analytics or related field.
Benefits and support
- Incentive awards for performance
- Maternity and parental leave
- PTO
- Health benefits
About Walmart
Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores. As one of the world's largest companies by revenue, it serves millions of customers daily through physical stores and robust e-commerce platforms. The company is driven by a commitment to everyday low prices and an expanding suite of digital and convenience-focused services.
- Industry
- Retail
- Company size
- 2000000+ employees
- Founded
- 1962
- Location
- Bentonville, Arkansas, USA
- Funding stage
- Public Company
Leadership
President and CEO
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Executive Vice President, Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer
Executive Vice President and Chief Growth Officer
President and CEO, Walmart U.S.
Recent coverage
HR Dive
Walmart Expands Employee Health Benefits With Free Prescriptions and NICU Leave2026-10-15
Zacks Investment Research
Walmart Announces 2026 Holiday Shopping Enhancements Including Express Pickup2026-10-15
Walmart Corporate
Walmart and Walmart Foundation Commit $1 Million for Hurricane Disaster Relief2026-10-12