I’m always in awe of how many lives and communities are changed by the work we do at Walmart. The cutting-edge tech we build makes life better for customers and members, further empowers our associates and unlocks new value for our business. Just as our tech stack is the foundation of every tech-enabled app, product or service, our associates enable all that we achieve with technology. That’s what being a people-led, tech-enabled company is all about.

I am excited to share that Walmart Global Tech is doubling down on our greatest asset – our people. We are hiring more than 5,000 associates globally this fiscal year and adding hubs in Toronto and Atlanta, two cities with formidable tech talent and strong ties to Walmart.

A rapidly growing tech powerhouse

Global Tech is the fastest-growing corporate team at Walmart and our technologists have a legacy of game-changing innovations.

Walmart’s early adoption of technology helped make it one of the world’s best success stories. Technology and our team have changed a lot since Walmart made Universal Product Codes (UPCs) the standard in retail, developed one of the most sophisticated supply chains and launched satellite communication in the early 1980s. Today, Walmart Global Tech develops and manages the foundational technologies on which customer experiences are built, including cloud, data, enterprise architecture, DevOps, infrastructure and security. We’re also a world-class enterprise services organization that develops solutions to help 2.3 million Walmart and Sam’s Club associates work and live better.

Walmart Global Tech now includes more than 20,000 associates globally. More technologists are choosing to build impactful careers with us, and we continue to invest in our current associates. In the last fiscal year, we grew by 26% and 20% of our team earned a promotion.

This year, we’re focused on hiring cybersecurity professionals, architects, developers, software engineers, data scientists, data engineers, technical program managers and product managers. Our growth includes entering new locations and expanding our presence in communities we call home.

Entering new locations

We strategically chose Atlanta and Toronto as our newest tech hubs because of their growing tech presence, connection to Walmart and broad, diverse talent.

Walmart has a strong presence in Toronto and the city is home to 26% of Canada’s tech workforce. Each year, 25,000 students in the area graduate from STEM-related fields. We plan to make Toronto one of our major Walmart Global Tech hubs, with plans to create several hundred new tech jobs in the next 12 months – all in support of keeping local talent on Canadian soil. In the short term, we will begin with 45 full-time associates, primarily software developers, product managers and technical program managers. In addition to the hundreds of jobs Walmart Global Tech is planning in Toronto, Walmart Canada is investing $1 billion in technology and other areas such as refurbishing local stores.

Atlanta is a major location for both Walmart and the cybersecurity industry, with growing strengths in software engineering, AI, machine learning and data science. The city’s talent pool is supported by strong local universities with the highest growth of tech graduates in the U.S. Our first hiring phase in Atlanta includes 140 new full time associate roles such as data scientists and software engineers. Our new team will join more than 70,000 Walmart associates currently based in Georgia.

We just posted our roles on our new Atlanta and Toronto teams and will announce more in the coming months. Both teams will work virtually in the near-term and will eventually transition to our hybrid way of working as we identify physical space for routine collaboration, personal development, networking and culture building.

A global team

With the addition of Atlanta and Toronto, Walmart Global Tech now has 16 hubs that span from Silicon Valley and Northwest Arkansas to Dallas and India. Our growth includes continuing to build teams in two locations we entered last year: Seattle, Washington and Chennai, India.

Increasing diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace remains a top priority as we grow. The tech industry has long-standing opportunities to build more diverse teams, and I believe Walmart can lead the way for candidates with unconventional experience and educational backgrounds.

This includes connecting with underrepresented groups like women and people of color, military community members, formerly incarcerated individuals and return to work caregivers. We recently re-envisioned our military and STEM partnerships to focus on skills-based pathways, and we continue teaming up with several Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Six months ago, Walmart became a founding member of OneTen, a coalition of major U.S. employers with a goal of hiring 1 million Black workers into family-sustaining roles over the next 10 years.

Every new hire is an integral part of our Walmart Global Tech team, and we’re committed to helping new associates find opportunities for personal and professional growth. We are looking for talented individuals who bring fresh perspective and a passion for advancing tech innovation to help others.

If you’re interested in changing lives and communities by building the future of retail with us, please visit careers.walmart.com/technology to learn more and apply.