Lead Engineer – Operational Technology Security

Target; Brooklyn Park (MN); Hybrid; USD 132,000 - 238,000; Full time

Job summary

Target is seeking a Lead Engineer - Operational Technology Security to own and operate the OT security platform across global sites. You will expand sensor coverage, improve data quality, and drive secure configuration and remediation with cross-functional teams.

A strong background in OT/ICS, automation, and threat prioritization is essential. You will collaborate with network and site teams to implement engineering patterns, integrations, and governance while mentoring peers and contributing

Qualifications

• 4-year degree OR equivalent work experience.
• 6+ years in security engineering, infrastructure, or platform engineering.
• Hands-on experience engineering and operating an OT visibility/exposure platform at enterprise scale.
• Strong understanding of OT/ICS fundamentals including Purdue Model and IT/OT boundary patterns.
• Experience with industrial protocols (Modbus, DNP3, OPC-UA, EtherNet/IP, PROFINET).
• Experience with OT asset inventory, discovery, reconciliation, and enrichment.
• Experience with OT vulnerability management, risk prioritization, and remediation validation.
• Secure-configuration baselines and hardening for OT servers, HMIs, and endpoints.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; cross-functional collaboration.
• Nice to have: Kafka, BigQuery, PowerBI, Terraform, CI/CD, GitHub Actions.

Responsibilities

• Own the OT Security platform engineering and day-to-day operations.
• Expand sensor coverage and health across OT environments with site teams.
• Build OT asset discovery, reconciliation, classification, and enrichment processes.
• Monitor data quality and close OT data coverage gaps for trusted insights.
• Prioritize risk based on operational consequence, asset criticality, and remediation feasibility.
• Mentor engineers and share OT security knowledge across the organization.

Skills

OT security engineering

Automation scripting

REST API integration

Communication skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Change management

Threat landscape knowledge

Nice to have: Kafka/BigQuery/PowerBI

Education

4-year degree or equivalent

Tools

Claroty XDome

Nozomi

Dragos

Armis

Tenable OT

Kafka

BigQuery

PowerBI

Terraform

CI/CD

GitHub Actions

Job description

The pay range is $132,000.00 - $238,000.00

Pay is based on several factors which vary based on position. These include labor markets and in some instances may include education, work experience and certifications. In addition to your pay, Target cares about and invests in you as a team member, so that you can take care of yourself and your family. Target offers eligible team members and their dependents comprehensive health benefits and programs, which may include medical, vision, dental, life insurance and more, to help you and your family take care of your whole selves. Other benefits for eligible team members include 401(k), employee discount, short term disability, long term disability, paid sick leave, paid national holidays, and paid vacation. Find competitive benefits from financial and education to well-being and beyond at https://corporate.target.com/careers/benefits.

Job title: Lead Engineer - Operational Technology Security

Minneapolis-based/hybrid

JOIN US AS A LEAD ENGINEER - Operational Technology Security

About Us

Working at Target means helping all families discover the joy of everyday life. We bring that vision to life through our values and culture. Target is one of the world's most recognized brands and one of America's leading retailers. But behind the brand our guests love, is a culture of continual innovation and right now, we are up to big things! Target's security team is a place where innovation happens daily. Interested in a culture that combines ongoing learning, engineering excellence, and stellar outcomes? We are too – that's why we work here. Join our team to improve Target's security and move the business forward.

As a Lead Engineer on the Operational Technology (OT) Security team, you'll operate, integrate, automate, and scale OT security across Target's global supply chain and retail sites. You'll own the engineering and day-to-day operation of Target's OT security platform that covers asset inventory, secure configuration, vulnerability management, event visibility/detection, and many more security use cases. You’ll develop automation to distribute the right findings to the right operational teams so they can resolve security issues safely and in priority order. You'll work across various security and engineering teams so security controls land safely in environments where availability, safety, and keeping product moving matter.

You have a builder's mindset, a strong bias for action, and the technical depth to turn standard OT Security control requirements into engineering patterns that teams can implement and that operators want to use.

Expect To

• Own the engineering, configuration, and day-to-day operation of the OT Security platform, including availability, performance, upgrades, licensing, access management, and continuous improvement.
• Expand and maintain sensor and collector coverage and health across OT environments, working with site and network teams on configuration and site installation.
• Build OT asset discovery, reconciliation, classification, and enrichment. Set minimum inventory-data expectations and work across teams to improve attribution, function, location, criticality, lifecycle, and support metadata.
• Monitor and improve platform data quality. Find and fix coverage and inventory gaps so OT asset, vulnerability, traffic-flow, and secure-configuration data can be trusted by consumers.
• Take in, normalize, correlate, and enrich findings and other OT exposure data, then prioritize risk based on operational consequence, asset criticality, exploitability, exposure, compensating controls, vendor support, maintenance windows, and remediation feasibility.
• Own secure configuration for OT. Use secure configuration data and other evidence to find security-relevant deviations, develop hardening patterns, prioritize gaps, and validate remediation.
• Develop shared engineering requirements, technical patterns, and acceptance criteria jointly with partner teams for network segmentation and vendor access patterns. Provide OT traffic-flow, asset, exposure, and operational-context data to support architecture and operations. Develop and implement methodologies for measuring adherence to the prescribed patterns.
• Document and track exceptions and compensating controls for OT systems that can't be remediated through normal processes because of vendor lockout, safety constraints, or product-movement schedules. Report remaining risk through the right governance process.
• Give OT-specific triage, remediation guidance, and closure validation to OT Infrastructure, site teams, system owners, and vendors.
• Build and maintain OT Security platform integrations and automation (APIs, connectors, scripts) and work closely with the team's data-integration engineers to move OT data into enterprise dashboards, ticketing, and remediation workflows with clear ownership and SLAs.
• Contribute to security engineering consultations on new or significantly changed OT solutions, including vendor and product evaluations, design reviews, hardening requirements, and vulnerability-management expectations.
• Reduce toil for the team and for OT operations partners through automation, self-service, runbooks, and reusable engineering patterns.
• Manage OT security vendor relationship day to day, including support cases, capability adoption, roadmap feedback, and input to evaluations and POCs.
• Mentor other engineers and share your OT security knowledge across Target's cybersecurity and OT engineering community.

Core responsibilities are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.

About You

• 4-year degree OR equivalent work experience
• 6+ years of hands-on experience in security engineering, infrastructure, or platform engineering, including significant experience securing OT/ICS environments
• Hands-on experience engineering and operating an OT asset visibility and exposure platform at enterprise scale, such as Claroty XDome, Nozomi, Dragos, Armis, Tenable OT, or similar. This includes sensor/collector deployment and health, coverage, data quality, and integrations
• Strong understanding of OT/ICS fundamentals: the Purdue Model, IT/OT boundary patterns, PLCs, HMIs, SCADA, industrial switches, Windows/Linux OT servers, and vendor-managed subsystems
• Working knowledge of industrial protocols (e.g., Modbus, DNP3, OPC-UA, EtherNet/IP, PROFINET), with a clear sense of when passive or active discovery is appropriate
• Experience with OT asset inventory: discovery, reconciliation, classification, and enrichment, and working with authoritative inventory owners to close gaps
• Experience with OT vulnerability and exposure management, including risk-based prioritization, exception tracking, compensating controls, and closure validation
• Experience with secure-configuration baselines and hardening for OT servers, HMIs, and industrial endpoints
• Hands-on familiarity with ISA/IEC 62443 and related frameworks (NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-82), and the ability to turn control requirements into practical engineering patterns and acceptance criteria
• Scripting and automation skills in at least one language (e.g., Python), plus experience working with REST APIs and integrating security tools with enterprise systems
• Experience running production platforms with change management, monitoring, and continuous-improvement practices in environments where availability and safety come first
• Working knowledge of OT network segmentation, DMZs, jump hosts, and vendor remote access
• Understanding of the current OT threat landscape, including IT-to-OT pivots, vendor remote access abuse, ransomware impact on OT-adjacent hosts, and IC…
• Strong cross-functional partner who can build trust with operational teams, site teams, and vendors, and treats operator experience as a first-class concern
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical OT risk to both engineers and non-security leaders
• Demonstrated curiosity, ownership, and a builder's mindset
• Nice to have: experience with Kafka, BigQuery, PowerBI, Terraform, CI/CD, or GitHub Actions

This position will operate as a Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement based on Target's needs. A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member's core role will need to be performed both onsite at the Target HQ MN location the role is assigned to and virtually, depending upon what your role, team and tasks require for that day. Work duties cannot be performed outside of the country of the primary work location, unless otherwise prescribed by Target.

Benefits Eligibility

Please paste this url into your preferred browser to learn about benefits eligibility for this role: https://tgt.biz/BenefitsForYou_E

Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)

In compliance with state and federal laws, Target will make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please reach out to [e-mail]. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.