Director, Software Engineering
Position Summary
The Director of Operations & Engineering Excellence for People Technology & Services is responsible for driving technical excellence, operational maturity, and execution across the engineering organization. This leader partners with engineering, product, infrastructure, security, and enterprise technology teams to improve reliability, scalability, developer productivity, and operational health.
What You'll Do
Lead enterprise-wide initiatives focused on engineering excellence, operational maturity, and technology modernization across People Technology & Services.
Define and evolve engineering standards for observability, reliability, system architecture, operational readiness, and software delivery.
Partner with engineering leaders to improve service health through measurable operational metrics, proactive monitoring, incident management, capacity planning, and post-incident learning.
Drive adoption of observability practices, including logging, metrics, tracing, dashboards, service-level objectives (SLOs), and operational insights that improve reliability and customer experience.
Provide technical leadership on architecture, system design, resiliency, scalability, and modernization efforts across complex distributed systems.
Lead complex cross-functional programs involving multiple engineering organizations, technology partners, and business stakeholders.
Establish governance, execution frameworks, risk management practices, and success metrics for strategic engineering initiatives.
Influence engineering roadmaps and organizational priorities through data-driven recommendations and executive-level communication.
Identify opportunities to improve engineering effectiveness through automation, tooling, operational simplification, and continuous improvement.
Foster a culture of operational excellence, accountability, learning, and continuous improvement across the organization.
Mentor engineering leaders and technical teams on operational best practices, engineering quality, and technical decision-making.
Represent Operations & Engineering Excellence in executive reviews, strategic planning, and cross-functional leadership forums.
What You'll Bring
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (Master's degree preferred).
10+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, site reliability engineering, platform engineering, or technical operations, including leadership experience.
Deep expertise in distributed systems architecture, cloud platforms, software engineering practices, and operational excellence.
Strong understanding of observability platforms, monitoring strategies, telemetry, logging, tracing, SLOs/SLIs, incident response, and reliability engineering principles.
Demonstrated experience leading large-scale, cross-functional technical programs with multiple stakeholders and complex dependencies.
Proven ability to influence senior engineering leaders and executives without direct organizational authority.
Experience developing engineering governance, operating models, technical standards, and organizational best practices.
Strong program management capabilities, including roadmap planning, prioritization, dependency management, risk mitigation, and executive reporting.
Excellent communication and executive presentation skills with the ability to simplify complex technical topics for diverse audiences.
Demonstrated ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution and operational delivery.
Experience working in fast-paced, highly matrixed enterprise environments.
Passion for building high-performing engineering organizations and enabling teams to deliver reliable, scalable technology solutions.
Additional Compensation
Annual salary range: $130,000.00 - $260,000.00
Performance-based bonus awards
Other great benefits for a happier mind, body, and wallet
Minimum Qualifications
Option 1: Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, computer information systems, software engineering, or related area and 6 years’ experience in software engineering or related area.
Option 2: 8 years’ experience in software engineering or related area. 3 years' supervisory experience.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience working in fast-paced, highly matrixed enterprise environments.
Passion for building high-performing engineering organizations and enabling teams to deliver reliable, scalable technology solutions.
Benefits
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.
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.