Principal, Data Scientist

Join a team that builds intelligent agents and ML powered solutions to make associates’ jobs easier, faster, and more fulfilling across stores, fulfillment centers, distribution centers, and the home office. This onsite role in Bentonville, Arkansas offers the chance to lead production ML systems and autonomous AI agents at scale, delivering clear business value. You will work with cutting edge language models through the Element LLM Gateway while keeping all data within Walmart’s network, and travel internationally to support operations in multiple regions.

Responsibilities

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

Minimum Qualifications

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

Preferred Qualifications

• Data science, machine learning, optimization models; PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Information Technology, 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 such as scikit‑learn, TensorFlow, or PyTorch
• Background in creating inclusive digital experiences, with knowledge of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 2.2 AA, assistive technologies, and integrating accessibility into product development following Walmart’s accessibility standards

Technologies

• LangChain, Pydantic AI, RAG patterns, BERT, SBERT, FAISS, YOLO, RT‑DETR, CLIP, ARIMA, Prophet
• Python, Pandas, NumPy, scikit‑learn, Docker, AWS SageMaker, GCP Vertex AI
• BigQuery, BigQuery ML, XGBoost, CatBoost, LightGBM, Random Forest, AutoML, PyTorch, transformer architectures, Element LLM Gateway

Benefits

• Medical, vision and dental coverage
• 401(k), stock purchase and company‑paid life insurance
• PTO including sick leave, parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting
• Short‑term and long‑term disability
• Company discounts
• Military Leave Pay
• Adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement
• Live Better U education benefit program

About the team

Our team builds intelligent agents and ML powered solutions that make associates’ jobs easier, faster, and more fulfilling across stores, fulfillment centers, distribution centers, and the home office. We leverage the Element LLM Gateway to safely access state‑of‑the‑art language models while keeping all data within Walmart’s network. Our work spans NLP, computer vision, time‑series forecasting, and multi‑agent AI systems at enterprise scale.

Primary Location

703 Associate Dr, Bentonville, AR 72716, United States of America (onsite)

Compensation

The annual salary range is $110,000 to $220,000. Additional compensation includes annual or quarterly performance bonuses. Stock may be offered for certain positions.