Principal Engineer - Core Platform Services

Target • Brooklyn Park, NC

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal Engineer is the senior-most individual-contributor technical leader on Target’s Core Platform Services team. The role partners with the Senior Engineering Manager and Product Manager to set technical vision, architecture, and standards, and to remove friction across the builder experience. It is hands-on and leads through technical depth, design, and influence rather than direct reports. The position also contributes to broader Infrastructure priorities beyond Core Platform Services.

Core Platform Services builds shared services that connect Target’s platforms and create a unified experience for builders. Its first major capability is Action Center, a shared service and API that lets platform teams publish and track work across more than 5,000 applications on the Target Application Platform. The team also develops remediation guides and agentic remediation, in which AI agents follow guides, make code changes, and open pull requests for human review. The team operates business-critical services in 24x7 production environments. Technologies commonly used include Golang, Kubernetes, Kafka, React, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and agentic AI patterns.

The Principal Engineer owns the end-to-end architecture of Core Platform Services, including Action Center, agentic remediation, future features and integrations, APIs, and MCP servers. The role addresses multi-tenant system design and safe AI-driven code changes, with least-privilege access, records of changes, and human review. The engineer partners with the Product Manager to guide the internal platform as a product, emphasizing self-service, measurable adoption, and builder experience. They set engineering standards, lead design and architecture reviews, influence enterprise architecture, and contribute to Infrastructure-wide priorities.

Success includes establishing an adopted architecture and roadmap, making remediation guides usable across multiple platform domains, delivering trusted agentic remediation in production, reducing builder time to completion, eliminating duplicated tooling, strengthening engineering capability through mentorship and standards, and contributing visibly to an Infrastructure-wide priority. The position is Hybrid/Flex for Your Day, with work performed onsite at the assigned Target HQ Minnesota location and virtually as required. Work duties may not be performed outside the country of the primary work location unless otherwise prescribed by Target.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience in technology development or services.
• 4+ years of experience in strategic planning and setting technical direction.
• A four-year degree or equivalent experience.
• In-depth knowledge of system design, build, test, and operational debugging practices.
• Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering production distributed systems at scale.
• A track record of sustained technical influence and standard-setting across multiple engineering teams.
• Deep, current expertise in distributed systems and multi-tenant platform design, including APIs and extension models, durable workflow orchestration, event-driven systems, identity, and authorization.
• Hands-on experience with LLM and agentic systems, including tool use and MCP, evaluation, and guardrails.
• Experience architecting and operating internal platforms, developer tooling, or shared services used by other teams.
• Experience designing multi-tenant systems with extension points that other teams build against.
• Experience building and securing production LLM or agentic systems, including evaluation, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop design.
• Experience supporting and operating 24x7 business-critical capabilities.
• Experience designing and deploying scalable APIs, microservices, and event-driven systems such as Kafka.
• Depth in one or more platform languages such as Golang, and orchestration with Kubernetes.
• Ability to communicate complex technical solutions clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to work effectively across multiple teams in a product-oriented environment.
• Commitment to continuous learning and staying current with evolving technologies.
• Ability to influence across an organization without direct authority, build architectural consensus across teams, mentor senior engineers, and bring clarity to ambiguous problems.
• A product mindset toward internal platforms, with success judged by adoption and builder experience and a focus on self-service.
• Ability to work onsite at the assigned Target HQ Minnesota location and virtually as required by the Hybrid/Flex for Your Day arrangement.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end architecture of Core Platform Services, including Action Center, agentic remediation, future features and integrations, APIs, and MCP servers.
• Design multi-tenant systems that can be extended by independent teams without disrupting one another.
• Design safe AI agents that can change code using least-privilege access, clear records of changes, and human review.
• Partner with the Product Manager to guide the platform as an internal product, with self-service, measurable adoption, and a strong builder experience.
• Set technical standards and lead design and architecture reviews across the team and partner platform teams.
• Contribute meaningfully to technical priorities across Infrastructure beyond Core Platform Services.
• Build relationships with Principal Engineers across Target to identify builder friction and opportunities, and work with the Product Manager to shape the roadmap.
• Represent Core Platform Services in enterprise architecture forums.
• Mentor senior engineers and strengthen the engineering bench through design leadership and durable technical standards.
• Support the operation of business-critical services in 24x7 production environments.
• Measure adoption, time to completion, and manual work removed to guide platform improvements.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health benefits and programs for eligible team members and dependents, potentially 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.
• Education and well-being benefits are referenced, with eligibility details provided through the company benefits resources.

What This Job Offers

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