Chief Software Architect

Job Description:

Under this position, you will lead a large developer community spanned across several orgs and business area, making strides in Walmart eCommerce across their respective markets and businesses. You will be responsible for the central platform behind supporting these mobile applications. You will lead strategy, technical roadmap, resolving shortcomings with a future looking perspective, and run the business.

About Team:

Our team works closely with our US stores and eCommerce business to better serve customers by empowering team members, stores, and merchants with technological innovation. From groceries and entertainment to sporting goods and crafts, Walmart U.S. offers an extensive selection that our customers value, whether they shop online at Walmart.com, through one of our mobile apps, or in-store. Focus areas include customers, stores and employees, in-store service, merchant tools, merchant data science, and search and personalization.

What you'll do:

As the Sr Distinguished Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the technical direction of our products and systems. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, mentor and guide engineering professionals, and drive innovation to deliver high-quality, scalable, and robust software solutions.

• Architectural Leadership: Lead the creation and maintenance of our technical architecture, aligning it with business goals and scalability requirements.
• System Design and Scalability: Architect complex software systems, ensuring performance, security, and scalability needs are met.
• Technical Guidance and Mentoring: Provide hands-on technical guidance and mentorship to software engineers, fostering a culture of learning and innovation.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including Product Management, UX/UI, Quality Assurance, and DevOps.
• Code Review and Standards: Establish and enforce coding standards, design patterns, and development best practices through thorough code reviews.
• Innovation and Research: Stay at the forefront of technological advancements, conducting research to identify emerging tools and methodologies.
• Project Management and Delivery: Collaborate with project managers to define project scopes, milestones, and deliverables, ensuring alignment with architectural goals.
• Collaborative Communication: Communicate complex technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, promoting a culture of open communication and collaboration.

What you'll bring:

• Extensive experience in the design, development, and delivery of software products with a large user base.
• Strong track record in an architect role with large-scale software development data backed services and applications.
• A clear vision for futuristic mobile app architecture design and great communication skills to articulate that to all levels of stakeholders.
• Excellent decision-making skills with the ability to balance conflicting interests in a complex and fast-paced environment.
• Thorough understanding of Frontend technologies, especially in mobile area with a keen eye on scalability, performance, developer productivity and other factors that apply to operating at a large scale.
• Experience working with geographically distributed teams.
• Business acumen; combining technical vision with business insights.

Architecture Acumen:

Requires knowledge of: Architectural principles; Systems and environment behavior; Architectural Styles, Patterns and plans; Architectural standards; Non-functional System performance parameters;

Technology Strategy:To design the plan for customizing/creating the architecture for multiple products/platforms within a domain and validate the technical priorities for the product/solution architecture. Define the architecture blueprint for various functional products within a domain. Define the architecture to build cross- system interactions ensuring reusability, consistency and integration. Identify, evaluate and recommend solutions and enhancement to framework to achieve desired performance and scalability. Prepare technical papers broadly outlining the approaches to be taken in building multiple systems. Define the tech stack for various products, platforms and solutions highlighting the pros and cons of each and also providing recommendations for future solutions.

Coding:

Requires knowledge of: Coding standards and guidelines; Coding languages (E.g. Swift, Kotlin, Java), frameworks(E.g. iOS SDK, Android SDK and underlying/related frameworks), tools (E.g. Lint, Gradle, iOS Build Tools, Mobile app profilers, etc) and Platforms (E.g. iOS, Android);Quality, Safety and Security (Mobile apps and Frontend Security standards, PCI etc.) standards; Emerging tools and technologies; Telemetry (Splunk, Grafana); CI / CD; Code Management Tools; SDLC, platforms (Android, iOS etc.), and environments for software coding/configuration and scripting. Guide the team on coding patterns, languages and frameworks in line with evolving trends in the industry (Ex: reactive vs. imperative etc.) and drive scalability and security. Drive Implementation of telemetry features by determining data/metrics requirement within the domain. Support ad-hoc reviews of software code to ensure baseline mitigations for known risks. Create/configure minimalistic code for entire product/system and ensure the product is meeting business requirements, non-functional requirements, low-maintainability, high-availability and high-scalability needs. Oversee the codes executed by team in line with specified technical/business requirements. Arrange project requirements in programming sequence by analyzing requirements. Testing or any other process across the domain. Conduct code reviews for code developed by the team. Drive security of the Code Base and ensure that no security violations are introduced.

Requirement And Scoping Analysis:

Requires knowledge of: Risk analysis methodologies; Cost Analysis; Business objectives; Classification of requirements; Domain Knowledge; User stories concepts; Functional / Non-Functional Requirements; Scoping and Estimation

To conduct comprehensive analysis of the requirements/updates/modifications to create long term solutions to meet the requirements. Design methods of performing gaps/updates/modification analysis efficiently and accurately. Contribute to design of reusable frameworks / processes to capture business/customer requirements. Evaluate and introduce appropriate industry tools and frameworks to capture requirements better. Provide guidelines / direction / oversight around scoping / translation of requirements into epics / stories, establish guidelines for trade-offs.

Technical Domain Design:

Requires knowledge of: Knowledge of multiple domains (mobile apps, mobile apps release, network, security, etc.); Architectural principles; Systems and environment behavior; Architectural Styles, Patterns and plans; Architectural standards.

To assess and communicate the business costs, benefits, risks and issues for alternative architectural strategies based on experience in multiple disciplines and domains, knowledge of the specific business supported and existing technology. Direct the discussion of issues and considerations for adopting an enterprise architecture. Develop models and plans to drive forward the strategy and promote business performance improvement opportunities. Share experiences with creating or enhancing architectural models for one or more domains. Discuss leading frameworks or providers of methods and tools for developing an enterprise architecture. Consult on architectural integration and implementation issues, and their business implications.

Influencing and Building Stakeholder Consensus:

Requires knowledge of: Verbal/Non-verbal behaviors; Application and allocation of Business Communication styles/techniques in ambiguous and challenging situations; Communication channels/mediums; Interpersonal skills and universal relationship building with ability to connect seemingly unconnected parties; Influencing styles.

To build consensus in sensitive situations, present conflicting perspectives in a fair and constructive manner. Confidently present to diverse organization wide audience, positioning arguments/data with a well-structured story. Connect with strategic business priorities, leveraging data & analytics, financial acumen and problem-solving techniques to build a cohesive narrative. Become a trusted advisor to diverse stakeholders, influencing them to take unpopular/difficult actions on the product/technology matters. Coach others on effective communication and consensus building.

Provides overall direction by analyzing business objectives and customer needs; developing, communicating, building support for, and implementing business strategies, plans, and practices; analyzing costs and forecasts and incorporating them into business plans; determining and supporting resource requirements; evaluating operational processes; measuring outcomes to ensure desired results; identifying and capitalizing on improvement opportunities; promoting a customer environment; and demonstrating adaptability and sponsoring continuous learning. Develops and implements strategies to attract and maintain a highly skilled and engaged workforce by diagnosing capability gaps; recruiting, selecting, and developing talent; supporting mentorship, workforce development, and succession planning; and leveraging the capabilities of new and existing talent.