Principal, Software Engineer
Walmart · Bengaluru · 20+ yrs experience · Posted 2026-07-10
Tech stack: Go, Java, Kubernetes, Python, Scala, Terraform
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About the role
Run Time Platforms (RTP), a division of Global Technology Platform (GTP), builds the core products and platforms that enable application teams to deploy, operate, and scale services consistently across Walmart’s runtime environments. RTP’s mission is to reduce operational complexity and accelerate delivery by providing secure-by-default, reliable, and standardized runtime capabilities—so teams can focus on building customer and associate experiences rather than reinventing infrastructure.
Within RTP, the Service Registry & Service Mesh team provides the foundational connectivity layer for modern distributed systems. We build and operate platforms that make it easy for services to find each other, communicate securely, and be governed consistently across clusters, environments, and markets. Our work underpins service-to-service communication for a large fleet of microservices and supports high-throughput, latency-sensitive workloads.
Responsibilities:
- Lead the technical strategy and architecture for the service mesh platform (e.g., Istio or equivalent) across multi-cluster, multi-environment deployments.
- Drive design and implementation of traffic management, resiliency patterns, and secure service-to-service communication (mTLS, authZ/authN, policy).
- Build and evolve platform capabilities for onboarding services at scale (templates, golden paths, automation, self-service workflows).
- Partner with application, SRE, security, and network teams to define standards for service connectivity, identity, and zero-trust posture.
- Own performance, reliability, and scalability goals for the mesh control/data plane; define SLOs/SLIs and operational runbooks.
- Establish observability standards (metrics, logs, traces) and enable end-to-end visibility across services and clusters.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership for incident response, root cause analysis, and long-term remediation.
- Evaluate and introduce new mesh capabilities (ambient/service-less patterns, gateways, WASM/extensibility, multi-tenancy) with clear ROI.
- Mentor senior engineers, raise engineering rigor (design reviews, technical docs, testing strategy), and influence org-wide adoption.
- Represent the team in architecture forums; communicate trade-offs and align stakeholders on platform roadmaps.
Qualifications:
- 15–20 years of industry experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems and platforms.
- Deep expertise in Kubernetes/container orchestration (cluster architecture, networking, upgrades, multi-cluster, RBAC, admission, controllers/operators).
- Strong hands-on experience with service mesh technologies (Istio preferred; Linkerd/Consul/App Mesh acceptable), including:
- Traffic management (routing, retries/timeouts, circuit breaking)
- Security (mTLS, cert management, identity, policy)
- Gateways/ingress/egress patterns and service discovery
- Control plane operations and upgrade strategies
- Strong understanding of cloud-native networking (CNI, Envoy/L7 proxies, DNS, east-west traffic, gateways, load balancing).
- Proven track record of designing for reliability and scale: SRE principles, SLOs, capacity planning, and failure-mode analysis.
- Experience building platform tooling and automation (GitOps, CI/CD, Helm/Kustomize, Terraform or similar IaC).
- Proficiency in at least one systems language (Go preferred; Java/Scala/Python acceptable) and experience building operators/controllers is a plus.
- Deep observability experience (Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing) and ability to translate telemetry into action.
- Strong security mindset (zero trust, least privilege, secret management) and experience partnering with security/compliance teams.
- Excellent communication skills—able to drive alignment across engineering orgs and influence without authority.
Qualifications
- 15–20 years of industry experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems and platforms.
- Deep expertise in Kubernetes/container orchestration (cluster architecture, networking, upgrades, multi-cluster, RBAC, admission, controllers/operators).
- Strong hands-on experience with service mesh technologies (Istio preferred; Linkerd/Consul/App Mesh acceptable), including:
- Traffic management (routing, retries/timeouts, circuit breaking)
- Security (mTLS, cert management, identity, policy)
- Gateways/ingress/egress patterns and service discovery
- Control plane operations and upgrade strategies
- Strong understanding of cloud-native networking (CNI, Envoy/L7 proxies, DNS, east-west traffic, gateways, load balancing).
- Proven track record of designing for reliability and scale: SRE principles, SLOs, capacity planning, and failure-mode analysis.
- Experience building platform tooling and automation (GitOps, CI/CD, Helm/Kustomize, Terraform or similar IaC).
- Proficiency in at least one systems language (Go preferred; Java/Scala/Python acceptable) and experience building operators/controllers is a plus.
- Deep observability experience (Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing) and ability to translate telemetry into action.
- Strong security mindset (zero trust, least privilege, secret management) and experience partnering with security/compliance teams.
- Excellent communication skills—able to drive alignment across engineering orgs and influence without authority.
Responsibilities
- Lead the technical strategy and architecture for the service mesh platform (e.g., Istio or equivalent) across multi-cluster, multi-environment deployments.
- Drive design and implementation of traffic management, resiliency patterns, and secure service-to-service communication (mTLS, authZ/authN, policy).
- Build and evolve platform capabilities for onboarding services at scale (templates, golden paths, automation, self-service workflows).
- Partner with application, SRE, security, and network teams to define standards for service connectivity, identity, and zero-trust posture.
- Own performance, reliability, and scalability goals for the mesh control/data plane; define SLOs/SLIs and operational runbooks.
- Establish observability standards (metrics, logs, traces) and enable end-to-end visibility across services and clusters.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership for incident response, root cause analysis, and long-term remediation.
- Evaluate and introduce new mesh capabilities (ambient/service-less patterns, gateways, WASM/extensibility, multi-tenancy) with clear ROI.
- Mentor senior engineers, raise engineering rigor (design reviews, technical docs, testing strategy), and influence org-wide adoption.
- Represent the team in architecture forums; communicate trade-offs and align stakeholders on platform roadmaps.