Principal AI Platform Engineer - Builder Experience

Target; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 168,000 - 356,000; Full time

Job summary

Target is seeking a Principal Engineer for AI Builder Experience and Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the design and delivery of AI-powered platforms across the enterprise. You will work with product and engineering teams to architect production-grade solutions, integrate model APIs, and ensure scalable, secure deployment.

You will mentor senior engineers, establish technical standards, and create reusable patterns, APIs, and tooling.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in CS or related field or equivalent industry experience.
• 8+ years designing and operating large-scale software platforms or AI systems.
• Experience with AI applications including LLM-powered or agentic systems.
• Ability to translate problems into scalable technical solutions and documentation.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership across Target's AI platform and engineering teams.
• Architect and deliver production-grade AI solutions, including LLM-powered apps.
• Develop reusable APIs, SDKs, frameworks, and developer tooling.
• Mentor senior engineers and influence architecture and standards enterprise-wide.
• Collaborate with product and architecture to shape platform roadmaps and patterns.

Skills

AI/ML systems

Distributed systems

APIs

SDKs

Platform engineering

CI/CD

Observability tooling

Cloud platforms

Containers

Orchestration

Education

MS or PhD in CS/Engineering or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Target is seeking a Principal Engineer for AI Builder Experience and Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the design and delivery of AI-powered platforms across the enterprise. You will work with product and engineering teams to architect production-grade solutions, integrate model APIs, and ensure scalable, secure deployment.

You will mentor senior engineers, establish technical standards, and create reusable patterns, APIs, and tooling.