Sr Engineer - AI Platforms - Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

Target • Brooklyn Park, NC

10d • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Senior Engineer in Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE), you will accelerate adoption of Target’s enterprise AI platforms by working directly with engineering and product teams on complex, high-value AI problems. The role sits at the intersection of AI engineering, platform engineering, and product development, applying technical expertise to help teams move from experimentation to production. You will design and implement solutions, integrate enterprise AI platform capabilities, and establish scalable engineering patterns. You will also use lessons from real-world implementations to improve the broader AI platform and builder experience by identifying recurring challenges and helping platform teams turn successful patterns into reusable components and self-service capabilities.

As a specialist on the engineering team supporting a product, you will help develop and understand application architecture, translate abstract architecture into concrete designs, and influence implementation. You will independently design and implement architecture, apply software engineering patterns to build robust and scalable systems, and influence fellow engineers through software designs, implementation guidance, code reviews, and technical mentorship.

Requirements

• Four-year degree or equivalent experience.
• At least 5 years of software development experience with strong hands-on engineering and programming skills.
• Experience designing, building, testing, deploying, and operating production-grade applications, services, or distributed systems.
• Experience building AI-enabled applications and working with technologies such as LLMs, model APIs, agentic frameworks, retrieval/context patterns, tool integration, or other modern AI capabilities.
• Strong proficiency in one or more modern programming languages and experience developing services and applications using modern frameworks and engineering practices.
• Experience designing and consuming APIs, SDKs, libraries, frameworks, or platform capabilities.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, APIs, scalability, reliability, performance, security, and production operations.
• Experience with cloud-native development, containers, orchestration, CI/CD, observability, testing, debugging, and operational monitoring.
• Ability to quickly understand ambiguous requirements and translate them into concrete technical designs and working software.
• Ability to work across the full engineering lifecycle, from rapid prototyping and experimentation to hardened production systems.
• Ability to evaluate technical tradeoffs and balance delivery speed with scalability, maintainability, operational excellence, and long-term platform needs.
• Strong problem-solving skills, including diagnosing complex technical and operational issues and preventing their recurrence.
• Experience collaborating directly with product teams and engineers and working across organizational and technical boundaries.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and influence design and implementation decisions through technical expertise.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, provide technical guidance, and raise engineering standards.
• Maintains technical knowledge in areas of expertise and stays current with evolving AI and software engineering technologies through formal training and self-directed learning.
• Work duties must be performed within the country of the primary work location, unless otherwise prescribed by Target.

Responsibilities

• Partner with engineering and product teams to design, build, and productionize AI-powered applications and experiences using Target’s enterprise AI platform.
• Develop production-grade solutions using generative AI, LLMs, agentic architectures, enterprise context and retrieval, model APIs, tools, and platform services.
• Translate ambiguous business and engineering problems into technical designs and working solutions that demonstrate measurable value.
• Lead technical implementation across exploration, prototyping, architecture, development, evaluation, deployment, observability, and production operations.
• Apply software engineering and distributed systems principles to make AI solutions scalable, reliable, secure, maintainable, and production-ready.
• Work with AI Platform teams to integrate platform capabilities and identify gaps encountered in real-world applications.
• Identify recurring patterns across FDE engagements and help convert them into reusable platform capabilities, APIs, SDKs, libraries, frameworks, templates, and reference architectures.
• Improve the AI builder experience across development, experimentation, testing, evaluation, debugging, deployment, and production operations.
• Build reference implementations and examples that demonstrate effective patterns for adopting enterprise AI capabilities.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies, frameworks, models, and developer tooling through research and proof-of-concept activities; recommend approaches based on scalability, maintainability, security, and cost.
• Lead code reviews, design reviews, testing, debugging, and architecture discussions while maintaining engineering quality and operational standards.
• Diagnose complex production and integration issues, identify systemic causes, and develop solutions to prevent recurrence.
• Collaborate across platform engineering, application engineering, product, architecture, data science, and other teams.
• Share technical learnings, patterns, and best practices with the broader engineering community and help engineers adopt them.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance through software designs, implementation guidance, code reviews, and technical discussions.

Benefits

• Eligible team members and dependents may receive comprehensive health benefits and programs, which may include 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; eligibility details are provided by Target.

What This Job Offers

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