Principal Engineer — Merchandising Platforms & APIs

Target; Brooklyn Park (MN); Hybrid; USD 168,000 - 303,000; Full time

Job summary

Target is seeking a Principal Engineer to set the strategy for software development and infrastructure engineering across multiple portfolios. You will drive architecture, guide APIs, and lead technical direction while mentoring teams.

You’ll partner with product and business leaders to balance delivery with long-term maintainability, ensuring scalable, secure systems across merchandising capabilities. Hybrid work available.

Qualifications

• Four-year degree or equivalent experience in a related field.
• 12+ years of technology development experience.
• 4+ years of experience setting technical strategy and shaping architecture.
• Deep experience designing distributed systems and service-oriented architectures.
• Experience with cloud technologies, containers and orchestration (Kubernetes), CI/CD, observability, and production operations.
• Strong programming and data experience in Java, SQL/NoSQL, and Python.

Responsibilities

• Set long-term technical strategy and architecture for merchandising capabilities.
• Lead design and evolution of scalable, secure services and APIs.
• Drive domain and data architecture with clear boundaries and consistency.
• Establish API design, event-driven integration, and cloud-native standards.
• Partner with product, EA, and engineering to translate business strategy into technical direction.
• Mentor engineers and lead architecture reviews across teams.

Skills

Leadership

Distributed systems

Cloud technologies

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Java

SQL/NoSQL

Python

Architecture

Communication

Education

Four-year degree

Tools

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Docker

SQL

NoSQL

Job description

Target is seeking a Principal Engineer to set the strategy for software development and infrastructure engineering across multiple portfolios. You will drive architecture, guide APIs, and lead technical direction while mentoring teams.

You’ll partner with product and business leaders to balance delivery with long-term maintainability, ensuring scalable, secure systems across merchandising capabilities. Hybrid work available.