Senior Software Engineer — Developer Platform
Pay is based on several factors which vary based on position. These include labor markets and in some instances may include education, work experience and certifications. In addition to your pay, Target cares about and invests in you as a team member, so that you can take care of yourself and your family. Target offers eligible team members and their dependents comprehensive health benefits and programs, which may include medical, vision, dental, life insurance and more, to help you and your family take care of your whole selves. Other benefits for eligible team members include 401(k), employee discount, short term disability, long term disability, paid sick leave, paid national holidays, and paid vacation. Find competitive benefits from financial and education to well-being and beyond at https://corporate.target.com/careers/benefits.
About Us
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.
We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Developer Platform team. You'll work on a platform used by thousands of engineers: a project generation system that scaffolds fully configured codebases in seconds, with approved patterns, security standards, and platform integrations built in. The platform you build and support powers the developer experience, enabling teams to move faster and focus on features that matter, not boilerplate.
You'll work on a full-stack system built across Kotlin, Python, and TypeScript. The work ranges from designing the abstractions that make new infrastructure integrations seamless, to building the AI-native agent interfaces that let engineers scaffold projects directly from their IDE or coding assistant tools.
The platform is growing fast. You'll have real ownership over technical decisions and contribute to a roadmap that's expanding into new infrastructure domains, AI-assisted developer workflows, and deeper integrations across a large-scale engineering organization.
As a Senior Engineer, you serve as a specialist in the engineering team that supports the product. You help develop and gain insight in the application architecture. You can distill an abstract architecture into concrete design and influence the implementation. You show expertise in applying the appropriate software engineering patterns to build robust and scalable systems. You are an expert in programming and apply your skills in developing the product. You have the skills to design and implement the architecture on your own, but choose to influence your fellow engineers by proposing software designs, providing feedback on software designs and/or implementation. You show good problem solving skills and can help the team in triaging operational issues. You leverage your expertise in eliminating repeat occurrences.
Use your technology acumen to apply and maintain knowledge of current and emerging technologies within specialized area(s) of the technology domain. Evaluate new technologies and participate in decision-making, accounting for several factors such as viability within Target’s technical environment, maintainability, and cost of ownership. Initiate and execute research and proof-of-concept activities for new technologies. Manage total product, financials and forecasting. Lead the design, lifecycle management, and total cost of ownership of services. Lead and conduct code review, design review, testing, and debugging activities at the application level. Lead functional design and architecture discussions with understanding of process flows and system diagrams to enable design decisions. Participate in routine and non-routine construction, automation, and implementation activities, ensuring successful implementation with architectural and operational requirements and best practices met. Provide technical oversight and coach others to resolve complex and severe technical issues. Lead disaster recovery activities and contribute to disaster recovery planning. Embed data quality protocols throughout data acquisition, processing, storage, and operational use.
Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.
About You
Required:
- 4-year degree or equivalent experience
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Strong backend fundamentals — proficient in JVM languages (Kotlin/Java)
- Experience designing and shipping production REST APIs
- PostgreSQL or other relational database experience
- Comfort navigating and contributing to distributed, multi-service codebases
- Writes and organizes code across multiple languages, including distributed programming, with understanding of different frameworks and paradigms
- Delivers high-performance, scalable, repeatable, and secure solutions (high throughput, low latency)
- Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines and developer platform tooling
- Strong critical thinking skills — navigates ambiguity with confidence, asks the right questions, identifies what's needed to move work forward
- Clearly communicates technical concepts to partners and teammates
- Designs testing methods and resolves complex technical issues with minimal assistance
- Stays current with new and evolving technologies via formal training and self-directed education
Nice to Have:
- React/TypeScript frontend experience
- Python experience
- Experience with AI tooling, LLMs, or the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- Familiarity with template engines (Jinja2, Cookiecutter, or similar)
- Background in developer experience, internal tooling, or platform engineering
This position will operate as a Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement based on Target’s needs. A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member’s core role will need to be performed both onsite at the Target HQ MN location the role is assigned to and virtually, depending upon what your role, team and tasks require for that day. Work duties cannot be performed outside of the country of the primary work location, unless otherwise prescribed by Target. Click here if you are curious to learn more about Minnesota.
Benefits Eligibility
Please paste this url into your preferred browser to learn about benefits eligibility for this role: https://tgt.biz/BenefitsForYou_DAmericans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
In compliance with state and federal laws, Target will make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please reach out to candidate.accommodations@HRHelp.Target.com. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.