Here's How Much Walmart Employees, From Designers to Software Engineers, Make in a Year New data reveals the compensation paid to Walmart's over two million employees.

By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut

Key Takeaways

  • Walmart is the world’s largest private employer, with a massive workforce of over two million employees.
  • New federal filings show how much Walmart pays for certain roles, like distinguished architects and product management directors.

New federal filings reveal what the world's largest private employer, Walmart, with over two million global employees, pays its workforce.

Top tech companies can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries, with Meta paying up to millions, and Walmart is no different. According to the filings, seen by Business Insider, Walmart pays software engineers up to $286,000, comparable to the $263,700 made by top engineers at rival Amazon.

Other tech giants offer high compensation for similar roles, including Microsoft, which can pay $284,000 for top engineering talent. At Meta and Google, the same roles can pay up to $480,000 at Meta and a maximum of $340,000 for Google.

Related: Top-Performing Walmart Managers Can Now Make $620,000 a Year

The filings also show that Walmart, which is the world's largest company by revenue, compensates staff product managers anywhere from $136,500 to $286,000. Meanwhile, data scientists take home a range of $138,333 to $286,000.

The data arrives from the 1,750 filings Walmart submitted to the U.S. Department of Labor in the first half of this year. Companies are required to submit pay information when hiring foreign workers through the H-1B visa program, which allows highly skilled workers to take on specialty occupations.

The documents show base annual salaries for H-1B visa workers and do not include additional forms of compensation, like signing bonuses and stock options. They present a snapshot of compensation, but not the entire picture.

Related: This 'Sweet' Role Is the Highest Paid Position at Walmart After Managers

The filings reveal that Walmart pays other roles as follows:

  • Distinguished Architect: $184,827 to $338,000
  • Senior Product Manager: $121,000 to $286,000
  • Senior Design Researcher: $142,002 to $234,000
  • User Experience Design Senior Manager: $183,227 to $286,000
  • Software Engineering Director: $190,486 to $312,000
  • Product Management Director: $201,323 to $338,000

While these roles can pay six figures, they are outside the typical salary for most Walmart employees.

Walmart's workforce mainly consists of hourly store workers, who average an hourly wage of close to $18. As of 2021, Walmart employed 1.2 million part-time and full-time hourly store workers in the U.S. out of 1.5 million overall U.S. employees. As of the time of writing, more than 75% of Walmart's 45,201 open jobs globally are for positions in Walmart stores and warehouses.

That composition is reflected in broader assessments of Walmart's pay levels. According to Walmart's annual proxy statement, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year, the median Walmart employee made $29,469.

In comparison, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon earned a total annual compensation of $27,408,854, or 930 times more than the median employee.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The statement also showed that Walmart has increased its workforce over the past few years. As of the end of fiscal year 2024, Walmart employed approximately 1.6 million U.S. employees and had about 2.1 million workers worldwide, making it both the largest employer in the U.S. and in the world.

Related: Here's How Much 8 CEOs Made in 2024, From JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon to Disney's Bob Iger

Some Walmart market managers who manage a cluster of stores can make $420,000 to $620,000 in total compensation. Walmart gave these managers a pay increase of up to $100,000 from last year.

Additionally, with revenue of $681 billion last year, Walmart beat Amazon, which earned $638 billion across the same period, to the top spot of the world's biggest company by revenue.

Walmart stock was up nearly 9% year-to-date at the time of writing. The company has a market value of over $780 billion.

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Sherin Shibu

BIZ Experiences Staff

News Reporter

Sherin Shibu is a business news reporter at BIZ Experiences.com. She previously worked for PCMag, Business Insider, The Messenger, and ZDNET as a reporter and copyeditor. Her areas of coverage encompass tech, business, strategy, finance, and even space. She is a Columbia University graduate.

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