Principal, Data Scientist – Converse

Position Summary...

What you'll do...

We are looking for an experienced Principal Data Scientist to join our emerging tech team. At Walmart Global Tech, we are leading the way in revolutionizing retail through advanced technology and data science. Our team of experts is committed to solving current supply chain challenges and conducting research and development to create models that address the future requirements of our complex omni-channel international business.

About Team: 
Cortex Team is Walmart's core A.I. conversational platform, powering the vision of delivering the world's best personal assistants to Walmart's customers, accessible via natural voice commands, text messages, rich UI interactions, and a mix of all of the above via multi-modal experiences. We believe /conversations/ are a natural and powerful user interface for interacting with technology and enable a richer customer experience -- both online and in-store. We are building and designing the next generation of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) services that other teams can easily integrate and leverage, and build rich experiences: from pure voice and text shopping assistants (Siri, [[https://tech.walmart.com/content/walmart-global-tech/en_us/blog/post/walmart-is-building-a-genai-powered-shopping-assistant.html][Sparky]]), to customer care channels, to mobile apps with rich, intertwined, multi-modal interaction modes ([[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/me-walmart/id1459898418][Me@Walmart]]).

What you'll do:

We need passionate and seasoned NLP data-scientists to help us improve and evolve our capabilities, considering the full conversational context, multi-modal interactions, and an ever-increasing list of use cases. Come at the right time, and you will have an enormous opportunity to make a massive impact on the design, architecture, and implementation of an innovative, mission critical product, driven by data-science, used every day, by people you know, and which customers love. As part of the emerging tech group, you will also have the additional opportunity of building demos, proof of concepts, creating white papers, writing blogs, etc.

What you'll bring:

• Proficient in Python; solid knowledge of SQL
• Hands on experience with classical ML models, test/train/evaluation metrics, key parameters/techniques that affect model performance
• Understanding of relevant statistical measures such as confidence intervals, significance of error measurements, development and evaluation data sets
• Familiar with NLU/NLP, more recent deep ML models (e.g., Transformers, BERT, Llama, Gpts, Gemini) including safe fine-tuning of these
• Ability to communicate with model consumers and present results intuitively
• Experience in identifying patterns, conducting error/ deviation analysis, and optimizing data representation
• Bachelor's degree or certification in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or any other related field

Preferred Qualifications:

• Exposure to real-world, production grade agentic systems