Senior, Data Scientist – Conversational AI

Position Summary...

What you'll do...

About Team 

The Conversational AI team at Walmart builds and deploys core AI assistant experiences across Walmart. The team builds the core AI platform, which powers multiple conversational assistants for shopping, customer care and employee assistance across Walmart’s US and International markets. With tens of millions of active users across multiple countries these are among the largest vertical AI assistant experiences in the industry. The team is part of a larger “Emerging Tech” org, which is focussed on utilising emerging technologies like Conversational AI, Extended Reality, Spatial awareness, etc to reimagine and build intuitive and immersive experiences for our customers, sellers and associates. 

 

We are looking for a Senior data scientist to lead the next evolution of the AI assistant platform by defining and building highly scalable Generative AI systems and infrastructure. This will be a hands-on data science role which requires expertise at the intersection of machine learning, ASR, large-scale distributed systems, multi-modal LLMs, and more. Our AI assistants are rapidly incorporating LLMs, agent-based architecture with custom fine-tuned models, and multiple data modalities. 
 
You can see more about the work our team does here in these articles: https://medium.com/walmartglobaltech/tagged/voice-assistant 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/02/15/the-amazing-ways-walmart-is-using-generative-ai 

 

 
What You Will Do 
In this role, as a senior data scientist you will own the technical roadmap and architecture for specific initiatives within the Conversational AI platform. The responsibilities include: 

• Partner with key business stakeholders and be a thought leader in the Conversational AI space for driving the development and planning of POCs and production AI solutions. 

• Translate business requirements into strategies, initiatives, and projects. Align these with business strategy and objectives. Drive the execution of the deliverables. 

• Design, build, test and deploy cutting edge AI solutions at scale, impacting millions of customers worldwide. 

• Lead specific initiatives within the platform, with focus on efficiency, innovation, and leverage. 

• Collaborate with the applied scientists, ML engineers, software engineers and product managers to develop next generation of AI assistant experiences. 

• Be up-to date on industry trends in the latest Generative AI, Speech processing and AI assistant architecture patterns (e.g. agent chaining, COT, RAG, LLM guardrails etc) 

• Provide technical leadership, guidance and mentorship to highly skilled and motivated data scientists in the team. 

• Lead innovation and efficiency through the complete problem-solving cycle, from approach to methods to development and results. 

• Partner and engage with associates in other regions for delivering the best services to customers around the globe. 

• Proactively participate in the external community to strengthen Walmart's brand and gain insights into industry practices.  

• Drive innovation in the charter and publish research in Rank A+ AI conferences like ICML, AAAI, NIPS, ACL, etc. 

 

 

What You Will Bring 

• Master's with 6+ years or Ph.D. with 3+ years of relevant experience. Educational qualifications should be Computer Science/Statistics/Mathematics or related area. 

• Strong track record in a data science tech lead role (2+ years), with deployment of large-scale AI services.  

• Extensive experience in the design, development, and delivery of AI products with a large customer base, preferably in conversational AI, speech, vision or machine learning based systems. 

• Extensive experience building and deploying GenAI/Deep learning models for real-time inferencing/streaming applications. 

• Strong experience in machine learning: Gen AI, NLP, Speech processing, Image processing, Classification models, regression models, Forecasting, Unsupervised models, Optimization, Graph ML, Causal inference, Causal ML, Statistical Learning, and experimentation. 

• Deep and demonstrated personal interest in generative AI space including awareness of latest architectural advancements in building generative AI applications. 

• Excellent decision-making skills with the ability to balance conflicting interests in a complex and fast-paced environment. 

• Deep experience in simultaneously leading multiple data science initiatives end to end – from translating business needs to analytical asks, leading the process of building solutions and the eventual act of deployment and maintenance. 

• Thorough understanding of distributed technologies, public cloud technologies, scalable platforms, ML- platforms and Operational Excellence. 

• Experience working with geographically distributed teams. 

• Business acumen; combining technical vision with business insights. 

• Research acumen; with papers published in top tier AI conferences like AAAI, NIPS, ICML, KDD, etc. 

• Strong experience with big data platforms – Hadoop (Hive, Map Reduce, HQL, Scala). 

• Strong experience in Python. 

 

About Global Tech. 

Imagine working in an environment where one line of code can make life easier for hundreds of millions of people.  That’s what we do at Walmart Global Tech. We’re a team of software engineers, data scientists, cybersecurity expert's and service professionals within the world’s leading retailer who make an epic impact and are at the forefront of the next retail disruption. People are why we innovate, and people power our innovations. We are people-led and tech-empowered.  

We train our team in the skillsets of the future and bring in experts like you to help us grow. We have roles for those chasing their first opportunity as well as those looking for the opportunity that will define their career. Here, you can kickstart a great career in tech, gain new skills and experience for virtually every industry, or leverage your expertise to innovate at scale, impact millions and reimagine the future of retail. 

  

Flexible, Hybrid Work 

We use a hybrid way of working with primary in office presence coupled with an optimal mix of virtual presence. We use our campuses to collaborate and be together in person, as business needs require and for development and networking opportunities. This approach helps us make quicker decisions, remove location barriers across our global team, be more flexible in our personal lives. 

 

Benefits  

Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance. Other great perks include a host of best-in-class benefits maternity and parental leave, PTO, health benefits, and much more. 

 

Equal Opportunity Employer  

Walmart, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer – By Choice. We believe we are best equipped to help our associates, customers, and the communities we serve live better when we really know them. That means understanding, respecting, and valuing diversity- unique styles, experiences, identities, ideas and opinions – while being inclusive of all people. 

Belonging

We aim to create a culture where every associate feels valued for who they are, rooted in respect for the individual. Our goal is to foster a sense of belonging, to create opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers, and to be a Walmart for everyone.

At Walmart, our vision is "everyone included." By fostering a workplace culture where everyone is—and feels—included, everyone wins. Our associates and customers reflect the makeup of all 19 countries where we operate. By making Walmart a welcoming place where all people feel like they belong, we’re able to engage associates, strengthen our business, improve our ability to serve customers, and support the communities where we operate.

 

Minimum Qualifications...

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

Minimum Qualifications:Option 1- Bachelor's degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field and 3 years' experience in an analytics related field. Option 2- Master's degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field and 1 years' experience in an analytics related field. Option 3 - 5 years' experience in an analytics or related field.

Preferred Qualifications...

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

Primary Location...

4,5,6, 7 Floor, Building 10, Sez, Cessna Business Park, Kadubeesanahalli Village, Varthur Hobli , India