Lead Engineer - Reliability Engineering & Enablement

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.

As a Lead Engineer, you serve as the technical anchor for the engineering teams supporting the product. You define and evolve architecture, influence technical direction across systems and teams, and ensure engineering investments align with business outcomes. You possess deep technical expertise and broad systems knowledge, enabling you to solve complex problems while acting as a force multiplier through technical leadership, mentorship, and engineering excellence. You balance hands-on execution with strategic thinking, driving scalable, reliable, and maintainable solutions that create long-term value for the organization.

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Define and evolve architecture across systems and products, ensuring alignment with business goals and long-term platform strategy.

• Lead design decisions for platform modernization, enterprise data capabilities, integrations, and reliability initiatives.

• Create technical roadmaps, ADRs, and modernization strategies that improve scalability, maintainability, and operational excellence.

• Evaluate emerging technologies and guide adoption of automation, AI-assisted engineering, and agentic capabilities where appropriate.

Platform Modernization & Reliability

• Drive improvements in reliability, observability, resiliency, security, and system performance across critical platforms.

• Reduce technical debt and platform coupling through modernization, service extraction, and event-driven architecture patterns.

• Establish reusable engineering patterns and operational standards that improve consistency and delivery velocity.

Engineering Excellence & Influence

• Lead design reviews, mentor engineers, and raise technical standards across teams.

• Act as a force multiplier by enabling engineers and teams to solve complex problems independently.

• Partner across engineering, architecture, data, and product organizations to align technical direction and drive execution.

• Influence technical decisions, manage technical risk, and communicate strategy to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

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

• Demonstrates strong domain-specific knowledge regarding Target’s technology capabilities, and key competitors’ products and differentiating features

• Demonstrates broad and deep expertise in multiple computer languages and frameworks (e.g., open source). Designs, develops, and approves end-to-end functionality of a product line, platform, or infrastructure

• Communicates and coordinates with project team, partners, and stakeholders

• Demonstrates expertise in analysis and optimization of systems capacity, performance, and operational health

• Understands and develops solutions to foster data lifecycle management

• Maintains deep technical knowledge within areas of expertise

• Stays current with new and evolving technologies via formal training and self-directed education

• Experience in building highly scalable distributed systems

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. 

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 candidate.accommodations@HRHelp.Target.com. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.