Senior Engineering Manager - Kafka Platform, Data Contract

Target • Brooklyn Park, MN

4d • $132,000 - $238,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

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. The Sr. Engineering Manager (SEM) is responsible for a managing a team of engineers. This role is accountable for leading a team, developing code, deploying and managing in production. You will be called upon to be the technical representative for your team during cross-team collaborative efforts and planning. Success in this role will require strong and innovative approaches to problem solving, great technical leadership, excellent communication (written and verbal, formal and informal), flexibility, accountability and a self-motivated working style with attention to detail. About this Team: Kafka powers analytics, operational systems, and AI across Target. As ingestion shifts left, enforceable schema governance and data quality at the edge are critical. This role owns the strategy and execution of a scalable, automated schema management platform that reduces producer friction, enforces enterprise standards, and strengthens data trust across domains. In this role, you will: • Lead the evolution of data contracts and schema standards across Avro, JSON, and Protobuf, enabling reliable, scalable producer–consumer integrations. • Drive production-grade reliability for schema and ingestion services, including resilience, observability, and SLA alignment. • Partner across platform and data engineering teams to modernize ingestion patterns that power analytics and AI. • Guide the structured migration and sunset of Autobahn while maintaining stability, reliability, and cost discipline. This role directly influences Target’s enterprise data posture and AI-readiness at scale. This leader will: Define and execute a multi-year platform vision grounded in strong product thinking, contract-first architecture, and enterprise governance standards. Lead technical strategy and hands-on delivery, driving architecture decisions aligned to Target platform and security standards. Champion reliability, quality, and operational discipline across development and production operations. Influence enterprise direction, partner with Product to shape roadmap, and drive Agile and DevOps excellence. Build and develop high-performing engineering teams, providing coaching, staffing strategy, and performance leadership. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.

Requirements

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 1–3 years of people leadership or equivalent delivery ownership.
• Proven experience building and operating cloud-native, distributed systems and high-performance APIs at scale.
• Strong background in resilient production architecture, reliability engineering, and raising engineering standards.
• Demonstrated product leadership (roadmaps, OKRs, migration execution) and experience with contract-driven or schema-governed platforms.
• Track record of building and developing high-performing teams within large enterprise environments.
• Ability to influence cross-domain stakeholders and drive alignment across complex ecosystems.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts for diverse audiences.
• Deep understanding of Agile, CI/CD, and incremental value delivery.

Nice To Haves

• knowledge of Target infrastructure and platform services
• vendor management experience
• leading geographically distributed teams

Responsibilities

• Lead the evolution of data contracts and schema standards across Avro, JSON, and Protobuf, enabling reliable, scalable producer–consumer integrations.
• Drive production-grade reliability for schema and ingestion services, including resilience, observability, and SLA alignment.
• Partner across platform and data engineering teams to modernize ingestion patterns that power analytics and AI.
• Guide the structured migration and sunset of Autobahn while maintaining stability, reliability, and cost discipline.
• Define and execute a multi-year platform vision grounded in strong product thinking, contract-first architecture, and enterprise governance standards.
• Lead technical strategy and hands-on delivery, driving architecture decisions aligned to Target platform and security standards.
• Champion reliability, quality, and operational discipline across development and production operations.
• Influence enterprise direction, partner with Product to shape roadmap, and drive Agile and DevOps excellence.
• Build and develop high-performing engineering teams, providing coaching, staffing strategy, and performance leadership.

Benefits

• comprehensive health benefits and programs, which may include medical, vision, dental, life insurance and more
• 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: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed