Distinguished, Software Engineer at Walmart
Bentonville, AR
$130,000–$260,000from the description
Jul 10, 2026
Bentonville, AR
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual contributor role focused on setting the technical direction for enterprise-scale AI and machine learning platforms, including generative AI integrations, model serving, and intelligent data pipelines. The position involves leading architecture decisions, establishing engineering standards, and guiding principal and senior engineers across multiple teams — without holding direct management authority. Best suited to a deeply experienced engineer with a strong background in production ML systems and distributed infrastructure.
Principal level · 12+ years · Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 9 people in the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 4–15
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $107,442 (middle half $83,272–$131,397). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The title 'Distinguished Engineer' is Walmart's explicit top-of-ladder IC designation, equivalent to Principal/Fellow; advertised and required seniority are both set to Principal accordingly.
The role is primarily a senior IC platform/AI engineering role with org-wide technical authority; 15-1252 (Software Developers) is chosen over 15-2051 (Data Scientists) because the emphasis is on building and architecting AI/ML platforms and systems rather than on modeling or statistical analysis. The alt code reflects the genuine AI/ML ambiguity.
The formal minimum qualifications section (Option 1: Bachelor's + 6 years; Option 2: 8 years) is lower than the body's '12+ years' requirement. The body requirement is treated as the operative gate for this senior IC role; the degree requirement is set to None because Option 2 explicitly accepts experience in lieu of a degree.
Observability is listed in the required qualifications with specific sub-components (structured logging, metrics, traces); it is captured as a single named skill per the canonical naming rules.
LLM tool-calling/agentic systems, schema/contract frameworks (JSON Schema, OpenAPI, Pydantic, protobuf), GenAI, and prompt engineering all appear under the Preferred Qualifications section.
The posting does not specify remote eligibility; the primary location is Bentonville, AR (Walmart HQ), so remote is set to false.
Compensation is stated as an annual salary range of $130,000–$260,000 with additional performance bonuses and potential stock; only the base range is captured in the comp fields.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): AI/ML production systems, cloud-native design.
Read the full posting
The employer publishes the full description on their own site — read it there ↗. Or sign in to read it here — it's free, and it also lets you track this application.