Software Developer Contract Jobs in Arkansas (NOW HIRING)

Position Summary... What you'll do...Join Walmart as a Principal Software Engineer for the Colony Platform within our AI & Data organization and help make it trivially easy for associates — engineers, data scientists, and builders— to go from idea to AI-based solutions quickly, safely, and cost effectively. 
At Walmart, we operate at Fortune #1 scale. Our challenges are complex, global, and deeply meaningful. Here, you’ll do the best work of your life — work that helps people save money and live better. 
About AI & Data
The AI & Data organization in Walmart Global Tech is building a platform-first ecosystem that centralizes enterprise data, provides AI foundations, and delivers intuitive AI solutions for all personas. We are enabling AI at enterprise scale — responsibly, securely, and reliably. 
Position Summary
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will serve as a senior technical authority and hands-on architect across critical AI & Data platforms. You will shape system architecture, influence engineering standards, and drive platform strategy that supports AI-powered experiences across Walmart globally. 
Colony is an agentic AI framework designed to orchestrate complex, AI-driven workflows in a multi-tenant environment. It provides a robust, API-driven process execution layer built on the Camunda Zeebe engine. You design agent behavior as visual workflows that are executed by a distributed process engine. This includes performance, reliability, safety of execution, and ship a great end-user experience. 
This role requires deep expertise in distributed systems, platform engineering, and AI-enabled architectures — combined with the ability to influence across teams and elevate technical rigor enterprise-wide. 
You will: 

• Own high-impact architectural decisions
• Drive scalable, resilient system design
• Prototype and productionize advanced AI-enabled capabilities
• Mentor senior engineers and act as a force multiplier
• Balance long-term platform sustainability with near-term business outcomes  

What You’ll Do
Architecture & Technical Strategy

• Define and evolve reference architectures for distributed systems, AI pipelines, and platform services.
• Drive system design reviews ensuring scalability, reliability, observability, and cost efficiency.
• Design systems that integrate cleanly with enterprise data and AI foundations.
• Make thoughtful design trade-offs balancing long-term platform integrity with short-term delivery needs.
• Improve the reliability and quality of the end-to-end system across local client + gateway + external APIs (debugging, telemetry, performance tuning).
• Implement security and compliance guardrails for local execution (least privilege, secrets handling, auditing, allowlists/deny lists where appropriate).
• Build comprehensive testing: unit, integration, contract tests for tool schemas, and end-to-end tests for common workflows.
• Drive engineering excellence: code reviews, design docs, mentoring, incident follow-ups, and raising operational standards.

AI-Enabled Platform Engineering

• Lead development of AI-powered services, agent workflows, and internal builder platforms.
• Prototype and productionize GenAI-enabled capabilities in secure, governed environments.
• Champion responsible AI patterns, including guardrails and human-in-the-loop design.
• Design, build, and operate core agent orchestration components (UI → agent core logic → tool manager → local tools).
• Develop and maintain local tool plugins (Python-based) that perform actions on behalf of the user (file read/list/edit, command execution, integrations).
• Build robust tool-call validation and execution (schema enforcement, parameter validation, retries, error handling, idempotency, and safe defaults).
• Integrate with enterprise APIs via HTTPS (e.g., Microsoft Graph) for workflows like user lookup, email/calendar actions, and related productivity scenarios.

Hands-On Technical Leadership

• Contribute code and prototypes for complex, high-risk, or ambiguous initiatives.
• Raise engineering standards driving engineering excellence through rigorous code reviews, operational reviews, and architectural discussions.
• Implement security and compliance guardrails for local execution (least privilege, secrets handling, auditing, allowlists/deny lists where appropriate).
• Improve CI/CD, reliability engineering, and platform observability practices.
• Establish performance, reliability, and cost benchmarks, E2E across local client + gateway + external APIs (debugging, telemetry, performance tuning).

Cross-Functional Influence

• Partner with product, governance, enterprise data, and infrastructure teams.
• Translate complex technical concepts into business-impact narratives.
• Drive consensus across senior engineers and engineering leaders.
• Influence multi-team roadmaps and reduce architectural fragmentation.

Mentorship & Technical Multiplication

• Mentor senior engineers and emerging technical leaders.
• Elevate architectural maturity across teams.
• Create reusable frameworks, patterns, and internal documentation that scale impact beyond your direct team.

What You’ll Bring

• 12+ years of experience building highly available, distributed systems.
• Proven track record delivering complex, enterprise-scale software systems from inception to production.
• Strong proficiency in Python (building libraries/services/tools), including packaging/dependencies, logging, and performance troubleshooting. 
• Working knowledge of OAuth2/OIDC authentication and scope/permission models.
• Familiarity with schema/contract frameworks (JSON Schema, OpenAPI, Pydantic, protobuf) and backward-compatible tool evolution.
• Experience with observability: structured logging, metrics, traces, and debugging distributed flows across client + gateway.
• Experience working with AI/ML ecosystems in production environments.
• Strong architectural judgment and ability to evaluate trade-offs.
• Exceptional communication, influence, and consensus-building skills.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and grow technical talent.
• Intellectual curiosity and ability to rapidly learn new domains and technologies.

Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Software Engineering, or related field and 5 years’ experience in software engineering or related area. 
Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field.
• Experience building AI-first platforms or internal developer ecosystems.
• Experience with LLM tool-calling / agentic systems (structured tool invocation, schema validation, prompt/tool definition design, guardrails).
• Experience integrating data/query execution systems (e.g., BigQuery-like workflows) with governance/cost controls.
• Strong command of CLI + Git workflows and building developer productivity tooling (SDKs, CLIs, templates, diagnostics).
• Experience embedding responsible AI and governance practices into engineering workflows.
• Knowledge of accessibility best practices, including WCAG 2.2 AA standards.

Why This Role Matters
The AI & Data organization is redefining how innovation happens at Walmart. As a Principal Engineer, you will shape the technical backbone that enables associates to safely and efficiently build AI-powered solutions at global scale. 
This is not just a senior engineering role — it is a platform-shaping, enterprise-impact position. 
About Walmart 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.
   Walmart’s culture is a competitive advantage, and it’s fostered by being together. Working together in person allows us to collaborate, align quickly and innovate with greater speed.  We use our campuses to create purposeful connection rooted in deepening understanding and investing in the development of our associates.  
Our hubs: Walmart is a global company with offices across the United States and around the world. Our global headquarters is in Bentonville, Arkansas, with primary hubs in the San Francisco Bay area and New York/New Jersey. 
Benefits:
Benefits: Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance. Other great perks include 401(k) match, stock purchase plan, paid maternity and parental leave, PTO, multiple health plans, 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 unique styles, experiences, identities, ideas, and opinions – while being inclusive of all people.
The above information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed in the role. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. The full Job Description can be made available as part of the hiring process. 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.
Bentonville, Arkansas US-09050: The annual salary range for this position is $110,000.00 - $220,000.00
Bellevue, Washington US-11663: The annual salary range for this position is $132,000.00 - $264,000.00
Sunnyvale, California US-11349: The annual salary range for this position is $143,000.00 - $286,000.00 Additional compensation includes annual or quarterly performance bonuses. Additional compensation for certain positions may also include :
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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 5 years’ experience in software engineering or related area.
Option 2: 7 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 3 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... 805 Se Moberly Ln., Bentonville, AR 72712, 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.