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.

Lead Security Engineer - Threat Management Platforms & Integrations

About us:

Target is an iconic brand, a Fortune 50 company and one of America’s leading retailers.

Target as a tech company? Absolutely. We’re the behind-the-scenes powerhouse that fuels Target’s passion and commitment to cutting-edge innovation. We anchor every facet of one of the world’s best-loved retailers with a strong technology framework that relies on the latest tools and technologies—and the brightest people—to deliver incredible value to guests online and in stores. Target Technology Services is on a mission to offer the systems, tools and support that guests and team members need and deserve. Our high-performing teams balance independence with collaboration, and we pride ourselves on being versatile, agile and creative. We drive industry-leading technologies in support of every angle of the business, and help ensure that Target operates smoothly, securely and reliably from the inside out.

About the role:

CFC Threat Management Engineering (TME) is a function-aligned engineering capability supporting Threat Management across core detection workloads, application stacks, workflows. TME builds the products, integrations, derived data capabilities, and technical platforms required to enable, operate, measure, and continuously improve Threat Management. The team is designed to solve high-value engineering problems that span systems and workflows, with a slight emphasis on data engineering and the product breadth to turn those capabilities into durable, consumable platforms through APIs, services, automation, and user-facing applications.

As a Lead Engineer, you will:

• Set technical direction and lead the design of complex, multi-component Threat Management systems translating ambiguous operational needs into durable architectures and executable plans while anticipating dependencies and improving cross-platform interoperability.
• Design, build, and evolve consumable Threat Management products and derived data capabilities across APIs, integrations, workflow orchestration, curated datasets, historical models, services, and user-facing applications, selecting the interaction model best suited to the problem.
• Lead engineering of detection-lifecycle capabilities that simplify rule authorship, validation, deployment, state verification, synchronization, and exception handling across multiple detection platforms.
• Build trustworthy measurement and observability foundations with clear definitions, assumptions, and lineage, enabling Threat Management to understand efficacy and performance, identify systemic friction, and drive evidence-based improvements in reliability, scalability, and engineering efficiency.
• Partner closely with Threat Management leadership and practitioners across the Threat Management function to frame problems, reconcile competing requirements, and determine the appropriate engineering response.
• Take durable ownership of products and platforms when TME is the appropriate long-term engineering home, including reliability, security, performance, maintainability, observability, support, technical lifecycle, and production incident response; drive durable corrective actions and improvements to resilience and support practices.
• Develop deep, authoritative understanding of critical data feeds and how they are used across Threat Management, then drive cross-platform, cross-team, and cross-pyramid efforts to reduce noise, improve signal quality, and increase confidence in detection outcomes.
• Define and own testing, quality-gate, release, rollback, and change-management strategies that enable safe, repeatable delivery across interconnected systems.
• Elevate engineering quality across teams through technical and design reviews, critical problem-solving, code review, pair programming, mentoring, and coaching-oriented feedback, helping engineers reason strategically about product, business, operational, security, and partner tradeoffs.
• Communicate technical direction, tradeoffs, and risk clearly to engineering partners, Threat Management leadership, Directors, and Sr. Directors, tying technology decisions to measurable outcomes.
• Model and influence safe, effective use of AI in engineering and Threat Management workflows, establishing appropriate guardrails for where automation is useful and where human judgment remains necessary.

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

CFC Threat Management Engineering | Lead Engineer (L6)

About you:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building and operating production systems, including ownership of complex problem spaces with a high degree of independence.
• Strong backend and platform engineering experience building APIs, services, integrations, workflow orchestration, and data-intensive applications.
• Meaningful frontend engineering experience building modern, intuitive user-facing applications and workflows, with the ability to work effectively across the full stack when the solution requires it.
• Experience building data pipelines, curated datasets, analytical or historical data models, and reusable data capabilities that support trustworthy metrics, analysis, and decision-making.
• Experience designing and integrating multi-component systems across APIs, event-driven workflows, data stores, and enterprise or third-party platforms.
• Experience with Git-based development workflows, CI/CD, automated validation and testing, and safe production release practices.
• Experience working in public or private cloud environments; experience with Google Cloud, particularly BigQuery, or comparable analytical data platforms is required.
• Practical cybersecurity engineering or operations experience sufficient to reason effectively about detection content, telemetry, adversary behavior, threat coverage, and defensive-system tradeoffs.
• Demonstrated ability to rapidly develop deep expertise in unfamiliar systems, data feeds, and emerging threats, then translate that understanding into useful engineering, analytical, or detection outcomes.
• Ability to investigate telemetry and threat behaviors, understand the semantics and limitations of the underlying data, and develop nuanced pivots, correlations, and approaches to improving detection coverage and signal quality.
• Demonstrated ability to define technical designs and evolve architecture from concept through production operation, including security, observability, scalability, resilience, and supportability.
• Demonstrated ability to resolve ambiguous requirements involving multiple teams or systems, make sound technical tradeoffs, and communicate decisions clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience leading design and code reviews, mentoring engineers, and raising engineering standards across team boundaries.
• Sound judgment in applying AI-assisted engineering and analytical techniques, including understanding where automation improves outcomes and where human judgment remains necessary.

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

Americans 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 [email protected]. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.