Lead Forward‑Deployed AI Platform Engineer (Hybrid)

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k)

Employee discount

Paid time off

Job summary

Target Corp in Minnesota is seeking a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer – AI Platforms to accelerate adoption of the enterprise AI platform. You will design production-grade architectures, guide teams across product, engineering, and platform groups, and build reusable tooling.

This hybrid role requires strong software engineering, system design, and hands-on AI development using LLMs and APIs. Join a team that values collaboration, architectural excellence, and scalable solutions that move from

Qualifications

• 4-year degree or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of software development experience with strong hands-on engineering and programming skills.
• Expertise in software architecture, design, distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native technologies and modern engineering practices.
• Demonstrated proficiency programming in Java, Python, Koltin, etc.
• Hands-on experience building and productionizing AI apps using LLMs, agentic architectures, model APIs, retrieval/context patterns, tool integration and evaluation frameworks.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives from design through production, guide architectural decisions, and navigate ambiguous engineering challenges across teams or systems.
• Experience with production engineering practices, including CI/CD, testing, observability, reliability, performance, security, and ops.
• Experience developing reusable engineering patterns, technical tooling, reference implementations, APIs, SDKs, or platform capabilities that improve platform adoption and engineering efficiency.
• Ability to provide technical guidance, influence engineering decisions, and improve engineering practices through collaboration, architecture reviews, and knowledge sharing.
• Effective communication and technical judgment, with the ability to evaluate tradeoffs and collaborate across product, engineering, and platform teams.
• Maintains technical knowledge within areas of expertise and stays current with rapidly evolving AI and software engineering technologies through formal training and self‑directed learning.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex technical engagements that accelerate AI platform adoption, combining solution architecture, hands-on engineering, and technical guidance to help teams move from experimentation to production.
• Design, build, and productionize AI solutions, reference implementations, technical tooling, and platform-support capabilities using LLMs, agentic architectures, enterprise context and retrieval, model APIs, and tool integrations.
• Guide technical design and implementation across engineering efforts, helping teams navigate complex architectural decisions, troubleshoot challenges, and develop scalable, maintainable solutions.
• Apply software engineering and distributed systems expertise to improve the reliability, security, performance, observability, and op readiness of production AI systems.
• Identify recurring implementation challenges, integration gaps, and platform limitations, collaborating with platform engineering to develop reusable patterns, APIs, SDKs, frameworks, and shared capabilities.
• Help establish and improve engineering practices across engagements - including architecture reviews, code quality, testing, evaluation, deployment, and prod ops.
• Collaborate across product, engineering, and platform teams to evaluate technical approaches, share implementation learnings, and improve how teams adopt and use enterprise AI capabilities.

Skills

Software architecture

Distributed systems

APIs

Cloud-native technologies

Engineering practices

Java

Python

LLMs

Agentic architectures

Production engineering

Education

4-year degree or equivalent experience

Job description

Target Corp in Minnesota is seeking a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer – AI Platforms to accelerate adoption of the enterprise AI platform. You will design production-grade architectures, guide teams across product, engineering, and platform groups, and build reusable tooling.

This hybrid role requires strong software engineering, system design, and hands-on AI development using LLMs and APIs. Join a team that values collaboration, architectural excellence, and scalable solutions that move from