Lead Engineer – Platform AI – Cloud and Compute (full stack)

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

Job summary

Target's Cloud & Compute Platform AI team seeks a Lead Engineer to anchor the engineering effort for a product, own the architecture, and drive scalable, secure systems. You will influence architecture and lead end-to-end solutions across UI, backend, APIs, and platform integrations.

In a hybrid on-site at Target HQ MN and remote arrangement, you will collaborate with product, security, reliability partners and shape technical direction while delivering observable, auditable capabilities to

Qualifications

• 4 year degree or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years of software development experience with at least one full cycle implementation.
• Experience leading at least one full-cycle implementation of a product, platform capability, infrastructure service, or major technical initiative from design through production operation.
• Deep expertise in designing, building, and operating highly scalable, reliable, secure, and performant distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical anchor for the engineering team and drive architecture decisions.
• Turn complex infrastructure into simple, dependable experiences for developers and users.
• Collaborate with product, design, platform engineering, security, and reliability partners to deliver secure, observable, and auditable capabilities.

Skills

Software leadership

Distributed systems

Cloud-native

Kubernetes

Kafka

APIs

Observability

Platform AI

Education

4 year degree or equivalent experience

Tools

Kubernetes

Kafka

Observability

APIs

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.

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. Learn more about Target here.

Lead Engineer

As a Lead Engineer, you serve as the technical anchor for the engineering team that supports a product. You create, own and are responsible for the application architecture that best serves the product in its functional and non-functional needs. You identify and drive architectural changes to accelerate feature development or improve the quality of service (or both). You have deep and broad engineering skills and are capable of standing up an architecture in its whole on your own, but you choose to influence a wider team by acting as a “force multiplier”.

Target’s Cloud & Compute

organization builds and operates the foundational platforms that power the experiences our guests, team members, partners, and engineers rely on every day. Within Cloud & Compute, the Platform AI team creates product experiences and platform capabilities that make infrastructure easier to understand, safer to change, and more transparent to operate. We embed trusted AI and agentic capabilities into the workflows engineers use to develop, deploy, manage, and support applications—connecting fragmented knowledge, tools, and processes so teams can find reliable answers, identify problems earlier, automate routine work, and take action with confidence.

In this role, you will combine technical leadership with a strong product mindset to turn complex infrastructure and operational challenges into simple, dependable experiences. You will help shape ambiguous problems, define technical direction, and lead the development of end-to-end solutions spanning user interfaces, backend services, APIs, platform integrations, and AI or agentic systems. One of the team’s initial initiatives is an action center embedded within our developer portal and coding companions, an experience designed to help application teams surface risks and opportunities, understand recommended actions, and safely resolve issues across deployment and production workflows. You will collaborate closely with product, design, platform engineering, security, and reliability partners to build secure, resilient, observable, and auditable capabilities that reduce manual effort and make it easier for teams across Target to deliver and operate applications successfully.

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

About You

• 4 year degree or equivalent experience
• 7+ years of software development experience with at least one full cycle implementation
• Experience leading at least one full-cycle implementation of a product, platform capability, infrastructure service, or major technical initiative from design through production operation.
• Deep expertise in designing, building, and operating highly scalable, reliable, secure, and performant distributed systems.
• Strong proficiency in multiple programming languages, frameworks, or technology stacks such as Java, Go, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Kotlin, or similar.
• Broad technical experience across one or more cloud-native or platform engineering domains such as Kubernetes, containers, compute, storage, networking, Kafka or streaming platforms, observability, SRE, cloud management, platform AI, APIs, or cloud console development.
• Demonstrates ability to define technical strategy, influence architecture, and make sound engineering tradeoffs across performance, availability, scalability, security, maintainability, cost, and developer experience.
• Communicates and coordinates with project team, partners, and stakeholders
• Maintains deep technical knowledge within areas of expertise
• Stays current with new and evolving technologies via formal training and self-directed education

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.