Senior Director, Software Engineering - Orchestration Foundation

About the Team

The Orchestration Foundation team within Runtime Platforms at Walmart Global Tech builds and maintains the workload orchestration layer for the company's entire compute infrastructure. This includes Kubernetes Platform (WCNP) for multi-cluster lifecycle management across various cloud and edge environments, OneOps for VM orchestration covering OS and Java lifecycle automation, Device Orchestration Platform (DOP) that automates store device deployments with policy-driven rollouts, and large-scale process orchestration workflows.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and own a multi-year technical roadmap for Orchestration Foundation, transforming customer and platform needs into clear deliverables and measurable outcomes across Kubernetes, VM orchestration, device platforms, profiling, cost optimization, and autonomous operations.
• Lead architectural design for the orchestration layer, ensuring scalable, extensible, decoupled, and operationally simple systems built from foundational principles rather than incremental fixes.
• Stay deeply engaged with the underlying technologies such as Kubernetes internals, cluster lifecycle management, VM orchestration, device deployment, and workflow orchestration engines; collaborate with architects and engineers on complex issues.
• Drive improvements in availability, performance, and efficiency of platforms including WCNP, OneOps, and DOP, through reliability targets, latency and throughput optimization, cloud resource profiling, right-sizing, ARM64 adoption, and workload rationalization to lower costs annually.
• Identify and automate manual operational tasks to reduce overhead, advancing autonomous platform operations through tools like Kubie, Wibey, and Forma to minimize mean time to recovery and manual interventions.
• Establish and manage program execution including OKRs, metrics, milestones, dependencies, and stakeholder communications to maintain transparent progress updates with leadership.
• Coordinate across teams and stakeholders including Runtime Platform counterparts, leadership, security, finance, and application teams to balance priorities and dependencies effectively.
• Design organizational structure with appropriate spans and layers, hire senior talent, conduct performance management, and develop senior technical individual contributors and engineering managers.
• Develop and implement a shared, multi-tenant platform managed services model to onboard various teams onto standardized infrastructure, creating scalable onboarding processes.
• Ensure platform security, compliance, and resilience by managing environment segmentation, PCI compliance, vulnerability remediation, disaster recovery testing, and defining SLO/SLA frameworks.

Candidate Profile

• Extensive engineering experience (18+ years) with a proven track record of building impactful products and platforms that deliver clear business results, starting from identifying customer problems through delivery.
• Strong ability to design large-scale systems from the ground up, understanding tenancy, decoupling, extensibility, domain modeling, and API design, supported by thorough architectural rationale.
• Deep technical expertise in Kubernetes, container orchestration, cloud-native platforms, with familiarity in VM orchestration, device management, and workflow engines.
• Demonstrated operational excellence in improving system availability, latency, throughput, and driving cloud infrastructure cost optimizations through profiling and workload management.
• Experienced in managing large engineering programs with effective OKRs, metrics, stakeholder management, and cross-team collaboration.
• Skilled in engineering organizational design, recruitment, calibration, promotions, and talent development particularly for senior technical roles and managers.
• Hands-on experience with multi-cloud environments including Azure and GCP, and operating Kubernetes/VM platforms in private data centers and edge contexts.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to simplify complex technical topics for senior leaders and influence cross-functional teams without direct authority.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical area.
• 18+ years in software engineering, focused on platform infrastructure, distributed systems, or cloud-native technologies.
• Over 6 years in senior engineering leadership roles managing large teams (30+ engineers).
• Proven production experience with Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• Successful ownership and delivery of platform products across cloud and hybrid infrastructures.
• Capability to develop and execute comprehensive multi-year technology roadmaps.
• Proven track record reducing infrastructure costs and increasing operational efficiency at scale.
• Strong presentation and communication skills for senior leadership engagement.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree with 5+ years of experience.
• Experience creating inclusive digital experiences with knowledge of WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards and assistive technologies.

Additional Information

This role is based in the Bangalore office with daily on-site work and flexibility for personal life balance. Walmart Global Tech emphasizes an inclusive culture where diversity is respected, offering benefits such as maternity/parental leave, paid time off, health coverage, and performance incentives.

Walmart’s vision is fostering a workspace where all employees feel included and valued. The role plays a strategic part in enhancing platform capabilities critical to the retail giant’s operations across multiple geographies.