Principal, Data Scientist - People.AI

Position Summary...

What you'll do...

About Walmart

Walmart employs more than 2.3 million associates worldwide, with 1.6 million associates in the U.S. Each year, Walmart hires 500,000 applicants to fill thousands of job profiles from engineers, designers, and marketers to pilots and buyers. We promote over 300,000 people annually to positions of greater responsibility.

About People Technology Team

The Enterprise People Technology team supports the successful deployment and adoption of new People technology across the enterprise. As a Fortune #1 company, our work impacts millions of associates globally. We strive to continuously improve people technology and products to help managers and associates focus on what matters most - supporting our customers and members. People Technology is a significant segment of Walmart Global Tech's Enterprise Business Services, invested in building a compact, robust organization that includes service operations and technology solutions for Finance, People, and the Associate Digital Experience.

About People.AI Team

The People.AI team is responsible for developing and deploying AI / ML solutions supporting the Walmart associates globally. In this role, you will build an LLM-powered intelligent experience within a chatbot or business application to enhance associate experience and productivity. You will design and build an intelligent conversational interface that improves communication, automates tasks, accesses data and insights, and provides personalized Q&A support to associates, ultimately creating a more efficient and engaging work environment.

What You'll Do

Develop LLM-powered intelligent experiences that interpret and generate insights from both tabular and unstructured data.

Build and optimize personalized Q&A systems using large language models, enabling context-aware responses tailored to user needs.

Design and enhance conversational talent recommendation systems, combining autonomous agent architectures with personalized recommendation algorithms.

Advance traditional recommendation systems by evolving them from simple ranked lists to multi-topic, interactive experiences that better reflect user intent.

Construct multi-agent intelligent workflows that translate natural language inputs into complex, goal-directed task sequences.

Collaborate within a highly cross-functional team, including data scientists, machine learning engineers, product managers, and UX designers.

Partner with fellow data scientists to design, prototype, and iterate on AI / ML models and system architectures.

Work closely with machine learning engineers to deploy, monitor, and optimize scalable AI / ML solutions in production environments.

Collaborate with product managers to design intuitive user experiences, define feedback loops, and analyze user telemetry to guide product improvements.

Engage in end-to-end AI / ML product development, from ideation to deployment, while continually expanding your technical and product skillset.

Follow and help define robust development standards to ensure the creation of trustworthy, safe, and responsible AI systems.

Contribute to internal and external AI / ML research through experimentation, whitepapers, and collaboration with the broader AI community.

What You'll Bring

Proven experience deploying high-risk NLP applications in real-world, production environments-such as those involving regulatory compliance, privacy, safety, or fairness.

Demonstrated ability to advance and implement Trustworthy AI and Responsible ML practices, working cross-functionally with engineering, legal, policy, and product stakeholders across a large enterprise.

Track record of mentoring and coaching junior data scientists, especially in navigating ambiguous or novel problem spaces.

Strong applied machine learning experience, with solid foundational knowledge in statistics, optimization, and deep learning-preferably gained at leading technology companies (e.g., Google, Meta, Microsoft) or AI-first startups.

Excellent communication skills with the ability to synthesize complex technical work into accessible insights for executive briefings, research publications, and external presentations.

Advanced proficiency in Python and common ML / DS libraries such as NumPy, pandas, scikit-learn, as well as deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch.

Experience designing and deploying scalable deep learning systems, including neural network architecture optimization, model distillation, quantization, or on-device inference.

Strong understanding of machine learning infrastructure, including experience with Kubeflow, MLflow, Airflow is a plus.

8+ years of industry experience, with a demonstrated ability to take ownership of complex projects and deliver impactful AI / ML solutions from concept to production.

Bonus Skills :

Hands-on experience with Text-to-SQL or Text-to-Cypher based application, or the design of modern recommender systems.

Experience developing or fine-tuning large language models (LLMs), including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or open-weight model customization.

Publication history in top-tier ML / NLP conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, EMNLP, or ICLR

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 .

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 $110,000.00-$220,000.00

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 : Bachelors degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology or related field and 5 years' experience in an analytics related field. Option 2 : Masters degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology or related field and 3 years' experience in an analytics related field. Option 3 : 7 years' experience in an analytics or related field

Preferred Qualifications...

Outlined below are the optional preferred qualifications for this position. If none are listed, there are no preferred qualifications.

Data science, machine learning, optimization models, PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Information Technology, Operations Research, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Econometrics, Publications or active peer reviewer in related journals or conference, Successful completion of one or more assessments in Python, Spark, Scala, or R, Using open source frameworks (for example, scikit learn, tensorflow, torch), 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...

2501 Se J St, Ste A, Bentonville, AR 72716-3724, United States of America

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 diversity- unique styles, experiences, identities, abilities, ideas and opinions- while being inclusive of all people.