Lead Engineer – Operational Technology Security

Target • Brooklyn Park, MN

1d • $132,000 - $238,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Lead Engineer on Target’s Operational Technology (OT) Security team, you will operate, integrate, automate, and scale OT security across global supply chain and retail sites. You will own the engineering and day-to-day operation of Target’s OT security platform, covering asset inventory, secure configuration, vulnerability management, event visibility and detection, and other security use cases. You will develop automation that routes relevant findings to operational teams so they can resolve security issues safely and in priority order. The role works across security and engineering teams to implement controls in environments where availability, safety, and product movement are critical.

The position requires a builder’s mindset, a bias for action, and the technical depth to turn OT security control requirements into practical engineering patterns for teams and operators. Responsibilities include platform operations and improvement; sensor and collector coverage; OT asset discovery and inventory quality; analysis and prioritization of exposure; secure configuration and remediation validation; segmentation and vendor-access patterns; exception and compensating-control governance; integrations and automation; security consultation for OT solutions; vendor relationship management; and mentoring and knowledge sharing.

This is a Minneapolis-based hybrid/flex role. Work is performed both onsite at the assigned Target HQ Minnesota location and virtually, depending on role, team, and daily tasks. Work duties cannot be performed outside the country of the primary work location unless otherwise prescribed by Target. Core responsibilities and duties may change due to business needs.

Requirements

• Four-year degree or equivalent work experience.
• At least 6 years of hands-on experience in security engineering, infrastructure, or platform engineering, including significant experience securing OT/ICS environments.
• Hands-on experience engineering and operating an enterprise-scale OT asset visibility and exposure platform, such as Claroty XDome, Nozomi, Dragos, Armis, Tenable OT, or similar, including sensor/collector deployment and health, coverage, data quality, and integrations.
• Strong understanding of OT/ICS fundamentals, including the Purdue Model, IT/OT boundary patterns, PLCs, HMIs, SCADA, industrial switches, Windows/Linux OT servers, and vendor-managed subsystems.
• Working knowledge of industrial protocols such as Modbus, DNP3, OPC-UA, EtherNet/IP, and PROFINET, and an understanding of when passive or active discovery is appropriate.
• Experience with OT asset inventory discovery, reconciliation, classification, and enrichment, including working with authoritative inventory owners to close gaps.
• Experience with OT vulnerability and exposure management, including risk-based prioritization, exception tracking, compensating controls, and closure validation.
• Experience with secure-configuration baselines and hardening for OT servers, HMIs, and industrial endpoints.
• Hands-on familiarity with ISA/IEC 62443 and related frameworks such as NIST CSF and NIST SP 800-82, and ability to turn control requirements into practical engineering patterns and acceptance criteria.
• Scripting and automation skills in at least one language, such as Python, plus experience with REST APIs and integrating security tools with enterprise systems.
• Experience running production platforms with change management, monitoring, and continuous-improvement practices in environments where availability and safety come first.
• Working knowledge of OT network segmentation, DMZs, jump hosts, and vendor remote access.
• Understanding of the current OT threat landscape, including IT-to-OT pivots, vendor remote-access abuse, ransomware impact on OT-adjacent hosts, and ICS-specific malware, and how it should shape prioritization.
• Ability to build trust with operational teams, site teams, and vendors, and to treat operator experience as a first-class concern.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical OT risk to engineers and non-security leaders.
• Demonstrated curiosity, ownership, and a builder’s mindset.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Kafka, BigQuery, PowerBI, Terraform, CI/CD, or GitHub Actions.

Responsibilities

• Own the engineering, configuration, availability, performance, upgrades, licensing, access management, and day-to-day operation of the OT Security platform; drive continuous improvement.
• Expand and maintain sensor and collector coverage and health across OT environments, coordinating configuration and site installation with site and network teams.
• Build OT asset discovery, reconciliation, classification, and enrichment; establish minimum inventory-data expectations and work with teams to improve asset attribution, function, location, criticality, lifecycle, and support metadata.
• Monitor and improve platform data quality, resolving coverage and inventory gaps so asset, vulnerability, traffic-flow, and secure-configuration data can be trusted.
• Normalize, correlate, and enrich OT exposure findings, and prioritize risk using operational consequence, asset criticality, exploitability, exposure, compensating controls, vendor support, maintenance windows, and remediation feasibility.
• Own OT secure configuration by identifying security-relevant deviations, developing hardening patterns, prioritizing gaps, and validating remediation.
• Develop shared engineering requirements, technical patterns, and acceptance criteria with partner teams for network segmentation and vendor-access patterns; provide OT context and develop methods to measure adherence.
• Document and track exceptions and compensating controls for OT systems that cannot be remediated through normal processes, and report remaining risk through appropriate governance.
• Provide OT-specific triage, remediation guidance, and closure validation to OT Infrastructure, site teams, system owners, and vendors.
• Build and maintain OT Security platform integrations and automation, including APIs, connectors, and scripts; work with data-integration engineers to route OT data into dashboards, ticketing, and remediation workflows with clear ownership and SLAs.
• Contribute to security engineering consultations for new or significantly changed OT solutions, including vendor and product evaluations, design reviews, hardening requirements, and vulnerability-management expectations.
• Reduce toil for the team and OT operations partners through automation, self-service, runbooks, and reusable engineering patterns.
• Manage the day-to-day OT security vendor relationship, including support cases, capability adoption, roadmap feedback, and input to evaluations and proofs of concept.
• Mentor other engineers and share OT security knowledge across Target’s cybersecurity and OT engineering community.

Benefits

• Eligible team members and their dependents may receive comprehensive health benefits and programs, including medical, vision, dental, and life insurance.
• 401(k).
• Employee discount.
• Short-term disability.
• Long-term disability.
• Paid sick leave.
• Paid national holidays.
• Paid vacation.
• Financial, education, and well-being benefits and programs may also be available to eligible team members.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior