Staff Machine Learning Engineer (AI)

Location: Onsite at the Bentonville, Arkansas home office, United States

Annual salary: $130,000–$260,000 in Bentonville; $169,000–$338,000 in Sunnyvale, California. Additional compensation may include performance bonuses and stock.

Company

Walmart Data Ventures powers data and AI platforms that support suppliers and retail operations, including generative AI, agentic intelligence, machine learning, measurement, and causal inference.

What you will do

• Lead the design and delivery of scalable, production-grade ML and AI systems.
• Translate business problems into technical requirements, architectures, and measurable success criteria.
• Productionize data science prototypes across batch, real-time, and agentic workloads.
• Own the ML and software development lifecycle, including testing, CI/CD, deployment, evaluation, observability, and monitoring.
• Build reusable ML infrastructure, frameworks, and platform capabilities.
• Lead production LLM and agentic systems involving retrieval, tool calling, orchestration, and state management.

Requirements

• Proficiency in Python, SQL, system design, testing, CI/CD, and production operations.
• Extensive experience designing and operating large-scale ML systems across training, evaluation, batch and real-time inference, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
• Strong understanding of MLOps, distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, APIs, containers, and relational or NoSQL data platforms.
• Experience with LLM and agentic systems, including retrieval, tool calling, orchestration, and evaluation.
• At least 4 years of relevant experience with a bachelor's degree, or 6 years of relevant experience without a degree.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, mentorship, and cross-functional communication.

Nice to have

• Master’s degree in a relevant computer science or engineering field.
• Experience with accessibility best practices, inclusive digital experiences, WCAG 2.2 AA, and assistive technologies.

Culture & Benefits

• Medical, vision, and dental coverage.
• 401(k), stock purchase options, company-paid life insurance, and potential stock compensation.
• Paid time off, sick leave, parental leave, family care leave, and other leave programs.
• Disability coverage, company discounts, military leave pay, and adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement.
• Walmart-paid education programs covering tuition, books, and fees for eligible full-time and part-time associates.