Principal, UX Designer​/Engineer - AI Systems

Position Summary

Principal UX Designer / Engineer, AI Systems – Design Organization

Base pay range: $/yr - $/yr

• Implement and product ionize AI systems by translating the AI roadmap into scalable, secure, and resilient solutions that meet the needs of the Design Organization.
• Drive AI innovation by identifying and delivering high-impact opportunities where generative AI, LLMs, and intelligent automation can enhance creative workflows, product discovery, design quality, and speed.
• Build and scale production services: develop reliable backend services in Python and Node.js, focusing on performance, resilience, and observability; harden prototypes into production-ready, secure, and scalable services within Walmart‑approved infrastructure and guardrails.
• Integrate with Walmart ecosystem: ensure seamless integration with Walmart identity, networking, data platforms, observability, and compliance controls (SSO, secrets management, service mesh).
• Define production readiness: establish gates for POCs, including SLA/SLO targets, error budgets, performance baselines, cost limits, capacity planning, disaster recovery, and runbooks.
• Operational excellence: lead CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and migration of prototypes to dev, stage, and prod environments; ensure operational ownership with alerting, on‑call strategies, incident response, and continuous improvement.
• Architect AI‑powered design tools: lead the technical design and architecture of internal tools and subsystems that empower designers, researchers, and content strategists; build scalable, reusable infrastructure for organization‑wide AI applications.
• Mentor and uplift technical craft: guide engineers and architects through complex architecture decisions, rapid prototyping, and AI tool selection; foster a culture of experimentation, technical excellence, and responsible innovation.
• Promote AI thought leadership: represent the Design Organization in internal AI communities, share learnings, and influence AI adoption across Walmart.

• Programming: expert in Python and Node.js for backend services, data pipelines, and AI integration.
• Kubernetes & Cloud‑Native: deep experience with Kubernetes, Helm/Kustomize, Git Ops (Argo CD/Flux), service mesh (Istio/Linkerd), autoscaling, security, and cost optimization.
• CI/CD & Infrastructure: proficient with Jenkins (or equivalent), Terraform/Cloud Formation, blue‑green/canary deployments, feature flags, automated testing, and rollback strategies.
• Data & Storage: strong experience with SQL (Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, Snowflake) and No
  
  SQL (Dynamo
  
  DB, Mongo
  
  DB, Cassandra, Redis, Elasticsearch) databases, schema design, optimization, and scaling; familiarity with vector databases and embedding stores.
• APIs & Integration: skilled in REST and Graph
  
  QL, secure service‑to‑service authentication, rate limiting, quotas, and event streaming (Kafka/Pub/Sub).
• Observability: experience with Prometheus, Grafana, tracing, metrics, log aggregation, SLOs, error budgets, and incident response.

• 12+ years in software or platform engineering, delivering production systems at scale.
• 7+ years combined professional experience in Python and Node.js (minimum 4+ years in each).
• 4+ years operating workloads in Kubernetes in production.
• 5+ years designing and operating both SQL and No
  
  SQL data models.
• 2+ years building or operating ML/LLM‑powered applications in production.
• 5+ years leading cross‑functional architecture and mentoring senior engineers.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong communication skills and a portfolio of shipped systems with measurable impact.

• Bachelor’s degree in UI/UX design, graphic design, visual communication, product design, computer science, information technology, or related area and 5 years’ experience in UI/UX or related design fields.
• 7 years’ experience in UI/UX, interactive and visual design, electronics art, multimedia design, or related area.
• Design certification (e.g., IDEOU‑Foundations in Design Thinking Certificate).
• Master’s degree in UI/UX Design, Product Design, or…