Senior Engineer – Workload Identity Platform (SPIFFE/SPIRE)
Target
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Benefits offered by this job
Job summary
Target is looking for a Senior Engineer for the Workload Identity Platform to design, build, and operate identity solutions in cloud-native environments. This role involves working with various teams to implement and scale SPIFFE/SPIRE-based identity services, manage identity lifecycle, and mentor other engineers.
The ideal candidate will have over 5 years in software engineering, strong Go skills, and experience with Kubernetes. Target offers a competitive pay range between $98,000 and $176,000 annually.
Qualifications
- 5+ years of software engineering experience designing and supporting production systems.
- 2+ years hands-on experience with SPIFFE/SPIRE.
- Experience troubleshooting distributed systems and microservices.
Responsibilities
- Design and support workload identity solutions using SPIFFE/SPIRE.
- Implement and manage identity lifecycle.
- Mentor engineers and establish best practices.
Skills
Education
Tools
Job description
The pay range is $98,000.00 - $176,000.00
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.
Working at Target means helping all families discover the joy of everyday life. Behind the scenes, our technology teams build and operate platforms that enable secure, scalable, and reliable experiences across the enterprise.
As a Senior Engineer on the Workload Identity Platform team, you will help design, build, and operate workload identity solutions that enable secure authentication and authorization for applications and infrastructure across cloud‑native environments. You will work closely with platform engineering, security, infrastructure, and application teams to implement and scale SPIFFE/SPIRE‑based identity services, integrate with Kubernetes environments, and automate identity lifecycle management. You will contribute to architecture decisions, lead complex technical initiatives, and mentor engineers while helping establish best practices for workload identity across the enterprise.
- Design, implement, and support workload identity solutions using SPIFFE/SPIRE.
- Deploy, configure, and operate SPIRE Server and SPIRE Agent infrastructure.
- Design and manage SPIFFE trust domains and workload identity models.
- Implement and support X.509 SVID and JWT‑SVID issuance, validation, rotation, and lifecycle management.
- Develop and maintain workload registration and attestation processes.
- Design and implement integrations between SPIRE, Kubernetes, and enterprise platforms.
- Develop custom SPIRE extensions, plugins, node attestors, or workload attestors where required.
- Partner with engineering teams to onboard workloads and applications to workload identity services.
- Implement identity‑aware authentication and authorization patterns for distributed systems.
- Troubleshoot complex identity, authentication, authorization, and certificate lifecycle issues.
- Contribute to platform automation, observability, reliability, and operational excellence.
- Participate in architecture reviews and technical design discussions.
- Mentor engineers and promote engineering best practices.
- Four-year degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of software engineering experience designing, developing, and supporting production systems.
- 2+ years of hands‑on experience with SPIFFE/SPIRE or equivalent workload identity technologies.
- Strong software development experience in Go.
- Experience building and operating cloud‑native applications and services in Kubernetes environments.
- Experience designing and troubleshooting distributed systems and microservice‑based architectures.
- Experience implementing workload authentication, identity, and trust solutions for cloud‑native platforms.
- Experience developing APIs, integrations, or platform services that operate at scale.
- Strong problem‑solving, debugging, and root‑cause analysis skills.
- Ability to work across teams and influence technical solutions through collaboration and engineering excellence.
- Hands‑on experience deploying and operating SPIRE Server and SPIRE Agents.
- Strong understanding of SPIFFE IDs, trust domains, and workload identity concepts.
- Experience implementing and managing X.509 SVIDs and JWT‑SVIDs.
- Experience with workload and node attestation mechanisms.
- Familiarity with SPIRE Registration APIs and Workload APIs.
- Experience developing or extending SPIRE integrations.
- Strong proficiency in Go.
- Experience building APIs, services, and distributed systems in Go.
- Experience developing integrations, plugins, or extensions for cloud‑native platforms.
- Experience with Linux environments and troubleshooting.
- Experience with CI/CD automation and deployment pipelines.
- Kubernetes administration and operations.
- Helm‑based deployments and configuration management.
- Containerized application architectures.
- Cloud‑native identity and workload security patterns.
- Experience operating services in production Kubernetes environments.
- Experience developing custom SPIRE node attestors or workload attestors.
- Experience extending SPIRE through custom plugins or integrations.
- Experience with Istio, Linkerd, or other service mesh technologies.
- Experience with Envoy proxy configuration and integration.
- Experience implementing mTLS for service‑to‑service authentication.
- Experience with Open Policy Agent (OPA).
- Experience with PKI and certificate lifecycle management.
- Experience with Java and/or Python.
- Experience operating SPIRE in large‑scale Kubernetes environments.
- Experience with multi‑cluster or multi‑cloud workload identity architectures.
- Contributions to SPIFFE, SPIRE, Kubernetes, Envoy, or related open‑source communities.
- Successfully enables workload identity adoption across multiple engineering teams.
- Delivers scalable and reliable SPIFFE/SPIRE‑based identity services.
- Reduces operational overhead through automation and self‑service capabilities.Establishes secure authentication and authorization patterns for cloud‑native workloads.
- Acts as a trusted technical contributor and mentor within the engineering organization.
- Helps evolve Target's workload identity platform to support future cloud‑native and Zero Trust initiatives.
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. Click here if you are curious to learn more about Minnesota.
Please paste this url into your preferred browser to learn about benefits eligibility for this role: https://tgt.biz/BenefitsForYou_D
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 candidate.accommodations@HRHelp.Target.com. Non‑accommodation‑related requests, such as application follow‑ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.
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