Monday, August 27, 2018
Walmart: Turning San Diego Into A Key Technology Center
When people think Walmart, they don't often think of the retail giant as a technology leader. However, the company's technology team, Walmart Labs (www.walmartlabs.com)--which said this month that it is planning on major growth in San Diego--- is responsible for the company's key supply chain technology, online e-commerce site, and much more. We caught up with Claude Jones, who is in charge of growing Walmart's technology team in Carlsbad from 70 people and tripling the team, out of new offices it announced this month.
What exactly does Walmart Labs work on in San Diego?
Claude Jones: There are actually two groups in Carlsbad. There is one group led by Robert Lowell, his teams runs the foundation team, which is primarily responsible for putting our SQL database in the cloud, and provides other technical solutions such as messaging, streaming, and caching for online and store system. He reports to another department. My team is responsible for building tools to help improve the online customer experience, whether that's through native apps, devices, or the web. We have our own A/B testing platform, and my team is responsible for that solution for desktop and native apps, not only for Walmart.com, but also online groceries and the market. From a scale perspective, we process anywhere from 11 to 12 million desktop requests daily, and on the mobile side, 22 million requests a day. Those are just numbers for Walmart.com. We're really focused on the continuous integration pipeline, on focused, operational efficiencies, both from a code quality perspective and speed-to-delivery perspective. We've actually open sourced Test Armada, our open source platform for testing. About three years ago, we found we were doing lots of manual testing of our code. So we developed this automation system, which saves thousands of hours of time for our engineers, running 50,000 automation tests a day. That allowed us to improve the quality of our deployment, moving from twice a month to daily. The last area my team is responsible for, is what we call our site merchandising tools. If you imagine going physically to a Walmart, there are different departments and categories on a shelf. These tools allow our business users to manage our virtual stores. It allows them to put items online into categories, and allows category specialists to manage our online inventory and make it easier for you to find what you need. That really helps improve conversion.
How long has Walmart had an office in San Diego?
Claude Jones: We've been here for six years to date .We started in August of 2012.
How did Walmart decide to set up in San Diego?
Claude Jones: That's an interesting story. I had work for Yahoo for nine years, and at the time, they had an office in Carlsbad. Things started to slow down at that office, but around the 2012 time frame, Walmart was doubling down on their ecommerce platform. They were looking to hire in the technology area, but they found out that the Bay Area was saturated. The started looking at the Carlsbad group of engineers, who were working at Yahoo, in order to jump start something in Southern California. I was an engineering leader at the time, and I had a few meetings with Walmart when I was working at Yahoo. They wanted to hire people, but wanted us to leave for the Bay Area. There were a number of us who were't too keen on doing that, and working with Walmart's lead at the time said—if you can get eight other people to join, we'll open up an office in Carlsbad. We were able to get eight, Rob was able to get five from his side, and we started Walmart in Carlsabd in August of 2012, with thirteen people.
How big are you now?
Claude Jones: In the last six years we've grown about 80 percent. We have hired close to 70 people over the last six years, and with our new office, we're looking to triple that headcount. We're going from 9,000 square feet, to 30,000 square feet, where we can accommodate 180 new associates.
Walmart is not the first thing most people think of when you talk about a technology company—and you have lots of competition in the area against both startup and big name companies. What do you tell people why they should work for Walmart Labs?
Claude Jones: That has been one of our biggest struggles. People don't know that Walmart Labs is the actual tech arm for Walmart. Some of the things we have been doing really have set ourselves as a technology powerhouse. We've also really been investing in the tech community. About a year and a half ago, we started the Walmart Labs blog, to give a voice to our internal associates, to share solutions and challenges they were facing every day, and using that as a way to attract technical talent. We are talking about the test automation, our networking, a lot of things we are doing with A/B testing, and how we've been open sourcing parts of that. We've been participating in open source. Over the last two years here, we've also been really aggressive in hosting local meetups, partnering with other companies like Intuit and some startups, to bring awareness to North County. We've run internship programs, and been part of tech conferences. We are doing a tech conference in Orange County on automation. We're also going out to the local community with hackathons. So, when you think about our blogs, contributing to open source, our community involvement, our hackathons, we're hoping to build a brand for Walmart Labs in Southern California, so people know we're here and the talent we're looking for.
Lots of people often get pressure to move their teams to Silicon Valley. What was it you told your higher ups at Walmart which convinced them to give Southern California a chance?
Claude Jones: Six years ago, I think Walmart really understood the job market in Silicon Valley was saturated. The had an opportunity here to execute and get their vision of building an e-commerce platform quickly. Things have evolved since then. Now, when Walmart is looking into why SoCal is important to its tech strategy and acquiring talent, there are three reasons. One, is the untapped technical talent in the San Diego area. As you know, San Diego is a leader in biotech, cleantech, defense, and the military, and has also become a hidden gem from technical talent, across multiple disciplines. Those include machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data, and other areas. There are other companies taking notice, like Google, Qualcomm, Evernote, GoPro, Viasat, and many others. Walmart has seen the trend, and wants to take action. Knowing they want to beef up on their technical workforce, and San Diego is a prime market to do that. The second part, is the investment in the tech community here. Walmart's investments in blogs, open source, contributions to loca lmeetings, you can see we are helping to build a stronger tech community in SoCal. Third, Carlsbad is an awesome place. If you think about it, it's a strategic location, where w'ere able to pull people from San Diego, and across the country. If you think about San Diego, the vacation destination, it's sunshine, beaches, and palm trees. That's something that's very attractive, and fits with our recruiting strategy. So, between the untapped technical talent, investing in the technology community, and San Diego as a great place to work, that's why Walmart has been looking to SoCal.
Thanks!