Distinguished, Software Engineer:Runtime Performance & Continuous Profiling

Position Summary...

We are looking for a Distinguished Engineer to lead the vision, strategy, and architecture of our enterprise-wide Continuous Profiling and Runtime Performance platform at Walmart Global Tech. In this high-impact leadership role, you will shape the technical direction for how we observe, analyze, and optimize execution efficiency across one of the world's largest containerized ecosystems.

Operating at the critical intersection of Linux kernel internals, managed application runtimes (JVM), and large-scale distributed systems, you will design low-overhead, continuous diagnostic frameworks that power massive workloads. You will solve unprecedented challenges in execution introspection, CPU/memory efficiency, and thread dynamics, ensuring our next-generation platform remains highly resilient, performant, and compliant with global financial and data security standards.

As a senior technical leader, you will translate corporate optimization strategies into concrete platform architecture, establish standardized performance engineering patterns across engineering domains, and mentor the next generation of principal engineers. Your work will directly drive massive infrastructure cost-savings, eliminate systemic performance bottlenecks, and enable safe, real-time runtime diagnostics at Walmart scale.

About the Team

Among accountability related to large scale application lifecycle management across all of Walmart, the Orchestration Platform team is also responsible for building the tooling, infrastructure, and native agents that monitor and optimize code execution across hundreds of thousands of cores. We focus on low-overhead, production-safe introspection, ensuring application teams have immediate access to sophisticated application profiling information without impacting customer-facing latencies, while establishing a solid foundation for optimal and thrifty usage of cloud resources.

What you'll do...

• Own the Performance Architecture: Define the long-term architectural vision for an enterprise continuous profiling platform capable of safely executing across multi-tenant Kubernetes environments at massive scale.
• Drive Runtime Innovation: Lead the technical evaluation, implementation, and deployment of advanced introspection technologies, balancing in-process runtime diagnostics (e.g., Async Profiler, JFR tracking) against system-wide, kernel-level
• instrumentation (e.g., eBPF-powered frameworks like Zymtrace).
• Architect for Strict Compliance: Establish the end-to-end security wrapper, access controls, and data-sanitization pipelines for profiling artifacts, ensuring zero leakage of sensitive data (PAN/SAD) within highly regulated Cardholder Data Environments (CDE) to satisfy PCI-DSS requirements.
• Optimize Infrastructure Efficiency: Collaborate with Platform Engineering to leverage profiling insights into automated scheduling enhancements, resource utilization metrics, and intelligent bin-packing, directly converting telemetry into measurable cloud capacity savings.
• Influence and Standardize: Act as the primary authority on runtime internals across Global Tech, guiding critical architectural trade-offs, driving the adoption of standardized profiling patterns, and mentoring engineering teams on advanced diagnostics.

What You’ll Bring

• Deep Runtime Internals Expertise: Comprehensive, low-level mastery of the HotSpot JVM (Java 17 and above), including garbage collection mechanics, JIT compiler dynamics (C1/C2), execution loop thread dynamics, and native memory management.
• Advanced Introspection Capabilities: Proven hands-on experience building or scaling continuous profiling solutions utilizing AsyncGetCallTrace, Java Flight Recorder (JFR), or deploying Linux perf_events and hardware performance counters.
• Kernel-Level & eBPF Systems Engineering: Deep understanding of Linux operating system kernels, process schedulers, and memory maps, with practical exposure to writing, verifier-validating, and deploying eBPF bytecode via node-level DaemonSets.
• High-Compliance Architecture Design: Demonstrable experience navigating security contexts, container sandboxing, and access controls (RBAC/mTLS) within scoped compliance boundaries, with a solid grasp of balancing infrastructure privileges against engineering visibility needs.
• Strategic Technical Leadership: A proven track record of guiding cross-functional engineering directions, defining architecture for mission-critical platform tools, and executing large-scale technology rollouts across a global footprint.

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 https://one.walmart.com/notices. 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.
Sunnyvale, California US-11657: The annual salary range for this position is $169,000.00 - $338,000.00
Bentonville, Arkansas US-30095: The annual salary range for this position is $130,000.00 - $260,000.00 Additional compensation includes annual or quarterly performance bonuses. Additional compensation for certain positions may also include :
- Stock

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Minimum Qualifications...

Outlined below are the required minimum qualifications for this position. If none are listed, there are no minimum qualifications.

Option 1: Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 6 years’ experience in software engineering or related area.
Option 2: 8 years’ experience in software engineering or related area.

Preferred Qualifications...

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

Master’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 4 years' experience in software engineering or related area, 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...

1345 Crossman Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1114, United States of America

Walmart and its subsidiaries are committed to maintaining a drug-free workplace and has a no tolerance policy regarding the use of illegal drugs and alcohol on the job. This policy applies to all employees and aims to create a safe and productive work environment.