Principal Engineer - AI Platform (Forward Deployed Engineering and AI Builder Experience)

Target • Brooklyn Park, MN

4d • $168,000 - $356,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

The AI Platform organization at Target is responsible for building and evolving the foundational capabilities that enable teams across Target to develop, deploy, and operate AI-powered products and experiences at enterprise scale. Our teams build platforms, frameworks, and developer experiences that make advanced AI technologies accessible, reliable, and scalable for engineers across the organization.

As a Principal Engineer – AI Builder Experience and Forward Deployed Engineering, you will provide technical leadership for how engineering teams across Target build, integrate, deploy, and operate AI-powered applications. You will work at the intersection of AI platform engineering, developer experience, and forward deployed engineering, partnering directly with product and engineering teams to accelerate complex and high-value AI initiatives while shaping reusable capabilities for the broader engineering community.

You will help architect and deliver production-grade AI solutions, including agentic and LLM-powered applications, while establishing scalable patterns for model and agent integration, enterprise context, evaluation, observability, deployment, and production operations. You will bring deep platform expertise directly to engineering teams, helping them navigate complex technical challenges and successfully move AI solutions from experimentation into production.

A critical part of this role is translating real-world implementation experience into improvements to the AI platform. You will identify recurring challenges and patterns across forward deployed engagements and turn those learnings into reusable APIs, SDKs, frameworks, developer tooling, reference architectures, and self-service platform capabilities. Through this feedback loop, you will help reduce bespoke engineering and continuously improve the experience for the next generation of AI builders.

You will also provide technical leadership for the end-to-end AI developer experience, including onboarding, development, experimentation, testing, evaluation, debugging, deployment, and observability. You will partner closely with platform engineering, product, architecture, and application teams to influence platform roadmaps, establish engineering standards, and create reference implementations that enable teams to adopt AI capabilities effectively and responsibly at scale.

Given the pace of change in AI, you will stay current on emerging technologies and engineering approaches, evaluate and recommend new frameworks and tooling, publish learnings and reusable patterns, mentor senior engineers, and influence technical direction across the broader AI engineering ecosystem. We utilize Agile principles, follow best-practice software design, participate in code reviews, and create maintainable, well-tested codebases with relevant documentation.

Core responsibilities of this job are articulated within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.

Requirements

• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or another quantitative discipline or equivalent industry experience
• 8 plus years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale software platforms, developer platforms, AI/ML systems, or distributed systems in production environments
• Strong hands-on software engineering experience and demonstrated ability to architect and deliver production-grade systems
• Experience designing and delivering AI applications, including LLM-powered or agentic systems, and understanding of model integration, context and retrieval patterns, tool integration, evaluation, and production operations
• Experience building developer-facing capabilities such as APIs, SDKs, frameworks, libraries, developer tooling, templates, or self-service platform experiences
• Experience with modern AI engineering and platform technologies, including model APIs, agent development frameworks, evaluation and observability tooling, cloud platforms, containers, orchestration, CI/CD, and operational monitoring
• Strong understanding of distributed system design, platform architecture, scalability, reliability, performance optimization, security, and production deployment considerations
• Demonstrated ability to partner directly with engineering and product teams, understand complex implementation challenges, and translate those challenges into scalable technical solutions and reusable platform capabilities
• Ability to operate effectively across the full engineering lifecycle, from architecture and prototyping through implementation, production deployment, and operational maturity
• Ability to translate ambiguous business and engineering problems into clear technical approaches and create strong technical documentation, reference architectures, narratives, and recommendations for a range of audiences
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, with demonstrated ability to establish technical direction and drive alignment across engineering teams and organizational boundaries
• Proven ability to mentor and provide technical leadership to senior engineers while influencing architecture and engineering standards without direct authority
• Self-driven and results-oriented, with strong ownership, sound technical judgment, and the ability to balance near-term delivery with long-term platform scalability
• Collaborative team player with experience working effectively across functions, organizations, and geographies, and with a demonstrated commitment to continuous learning and knowledge sharing

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership for how engineering teams across Target build, integrate, deploy, and operate AI-powered applications.
• Work at the intersection of AI platform engineering, developer experience, and forward deployed engineering, partnering directly with product and engineering teams to accelerate complex and high-value AI initiatives while shaping reusable capabilities for the broader engineering community.
• Architect and deliver production-grade AI solutions, including agentic and LLM-powered applications.
• Establish scalable patterns for model and agent integration, enterprise context, evaluation, observability, deployment, and production operations.
• Bring deep platform expertise directly to engineering teams, helping them navigate complex technical challenges and successfully move AI solutions from experimentation into production.
• Identify recurring challenges and patterns across forward deployed engagements and turn those learnings into reusable APIs, SDKs, frameworks, developer tooling, reference architectures, and self-service platform capabilities.
• Provide technical leadership for the end-to-end AI developer experience, including onboarding, development, experimentation, testing, evaluation, debugging, deployment, and observability.
• Partner closely with platform engineering, product, architecture, and application teams to influence platform roadmaps, establish engineering standards, and create reference implementations that enable teams to adopt AI capabilities effectively and responsibly at scale.
• Stay current on emerging technologies and engineering approaches, evaluate and recommend new frameworks and tooling.
• Publish learnings and reusable patterns.
• Mentor senior engineers.
• Influence technical direction across the broader AI engineering ecosystem.
• Utilize Agile principles, follow best-practice software design, participate in code reviews, and create maintainable, well-tested codebases with relevant documentation.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health benefits and programs (medical, vision, dental, life insurance)
• 401(k)
• Employee discount
• Short term disability
• Long term disability
• Paid sick leave
• Paid national holidays
• Paid vacation

What This Job Offers

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