(USA) Staff, Software Engineer

Position Summary...

What you'll do...

We are building the next generation of AI powered experiences on smart TVs think on device large language models, real time content understanding, privacy preserving audience insights, and interactive generative graphics that transform millions of households to discover, shop, and play. You will be one of the first engineers bridging deep learning research with production code on consumer electronics hardware.

About the team: Walmart's Advertising Technology group enables the connection between supplier brands and retail shoppers at unprecedented scale. We are a highly motivated group of engineers and data scientists, working in an agile group to solve sophisticated and high impact problems. We serve billions of ads requests every month with our high-performance ad servers. There are millions of customers shop on Walmart websites and in stores daily, and advertising helps advertisers bring the best products to our customers. If you want to influence millions of customers on their shopping journeys, we have a role for you. The AdTech M&R data team is responsible for delivering reporting and measurement for Advertisers to analyze and optimize campaigns. We are a team of data developers and machine learning developers whose strengths are: (1) building scalable data pipelines (2) using machine learning techniques and data science (3) making sense of broadly defined problems through data analysis. We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to architect the future of TV advertising. As viewers shift from linear TV to streaming (CTV/OTT), the engineering challenges are shifting from "web scale" to "broadcast scale."
You will build the backend systems that power Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) and Real-Time Bidding (RTB) for the largest screens in the house. You will own services that must stitch ads into live video streams with frame-perfect accuracy and handle the "Thundering Herd" of millions of concurrent ad breaks during live sports events.
What You’ll Do

• Architect Video Ad Infrastructure: Design high-throughput microservices responsible for SSAI (Server-Side Ad Insertion). You will build the logic that manipulates video manifests (HLS/M3U8, DASH/MPD) to stitch ads seamlessly into content streams.
• Solve "Live Event" Concurrency: Engineer systems capable of scaling from baseline traffic to millions of concurrent requests in seconds (e.g., during the Super Bowl or live Premier League matches).
• Optimization Engines: Build complex bidding agents that solve the "Knapsack problem" in real-time—determining the optimal combination of ads to fill a 60-second commercial break to maximize revenue while respecting brand safety and competitive separation rules.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Mentor senior engineers, drive technical design reviews, and partner with Product to define the roadmap for our video monetization platform.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience: 8+ years of backend engineering experience, with at least 3 years serving as a Tech Lead or Staff Engineer in a high-volume environment.
• Core Languages: Mastery of Java or Golang. (Experience with C++ or Rust is a plus for core engine work).
• Distributed Systems: Deep understanding of CAP theorem, eventual consistency, distributed caching, and sharding strategies.
• AdTech/High-Performance Background: Proven track record of building systems with strict latency SLAs (e.g., < 100ms end-to-end response times).
• Databases & Caching: Development of services working with high-performance databases (e.g., MS SQL-server, Aerospike, Cassandra, ScyllaDB, Spanner, etc.) and in-memory caches (Redis, Memcached).
• Data Structures: Proven ability to utilize in-memory queues and look-up tables for extreme performance.
• Algorithms: Experience building heuristic data processing/optimization engines (monetization logic, bidding agents, Knapsack problems, similarity/matching algorithms).
• System Design: Expertise in SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and microservices design patterns.