Lead Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) - AI Platforms (ML, LLMs, APIs, ML Ops)

The pay range is $132,000.00 - $238,000.00

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 .

JOIN TARGET AS A LEAD ENGINEER – FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEERING - AI PLATFORMS

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.

As a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Platforms (FDE), you will help accelerate the adoption of Target's enterprise AI platform by working with product and engineering teams to solve complex technical challenges, enable platform capabilities, and help teams build and operate production-grade AI applications.  You will operate at the intersection of AI engineering, platform engineering, and product development bringing technical expertise in software architecture, distributed systems, LLMs, and agentic systems. You will combine hands-on engineering with technical guidance, solution architecture, and development of reusable tools and solutions that improve how teams adopt and use the enterprise AI platform

A key part of this role is learning from real-world implementations and using those insights to improve the broader AI platform. You will collaborate across engineering teams to identify recurring challenges, address adoption friction, and help translate successful implementation patterns into scalable platform capabilities.

As a Lead FDE Engineer, you bring broad technical expertise and help guide complex engineering efforts across teams and systems. You can independently design and implement production-grade architectures while improving the effectiveness of others through technical guidance, engineering practices, and collaborative problem-solving. You help teams navigate architectural tradeoffs, raise engineering quality, and connect technical decisions to long-term platform and product outcomes.

As a Lead Engineer within Forward Deployed Engineering, you’ll:

• Lead complex technical engagements that accelerate enterprise AI platform adoption, combining solution architecture, hands-on engineering, and technical guidance to help teams move from experimentation to production
• Design, build, and productionize AI solutions, reference implementations, technical tooling, and platform-support capabilities using LLMs, agentic architectures, enterprise context and retrieval, model APIs, and tool integrations
• Guide technical design and implementation across engineering efforts, helping teams navigate complex architectural decisions, troubleshoot challenges, and develop scalable, maintainable solutions
• Apply software engineering and distributed systems expertise to improve the reliability, security, performance, observability, and op readiness of production AI systems
• Identify recurring implementation challenges, integration gaps, and platform limitations, collaborating with platform engineering to develop reusable patterns, APIs, SDKs, frameworks, and shared capabilities
• Help establish and improve engineering practices across engagements - including architecture reviews, code quality, testing, evaluation, deployment, and prod ops
• Collaborate across product, engineering, and platform teams to evaluate technical approaches, share implementation learnings, and improve how teams adopt and use enterprise AI capabilities

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

About you:

• 4-year degree or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of software development experience with strong hands-on engineering and programming skills
• Expertise in software architecture, design, distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native technologies and modern engineering practices
• Demonstrated proficiency programming in Java, Python, Koltin, etc.
• Hands-on experience building and productionizing AI apps using LLMs, agentic architectures, model APIs, retrieval/context patterns, tool integration and evaluation frameworks
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives from design through production, guide architectural decisions, and navigate ambiguous engineering challenges across teams or systems
• Experience with production engineering practices, including CI/CD, testing, observability, reliability, performance, security, and ops
• Experience developing reusable engineering patterns, technical tooling, reference implementations, APIs, SDKs, or platform capabilities that improve platform adoption and engineering efficiency
• Ability to provide technical guidance, influence engineering decisions, and improve engineering practices through collaboration, architecture reviews, and knowledge sharing
• Effective communication and technical judgment, with the ability to evaluate tradeoffs and collaborate across product, engineering, and platform teams
• Maintains technical knowledge within areas of expertise and stays current with rapidly evolving AI and software engineering technologies through formal training and self-directed learning.

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.

This position may be considered for a Remote or Hybrid (known internally at Target as "Flex for Your Day") work arrangement based on Target's needs.  A Remote work arrangement means the team member works full-time from home or an alternate location that's not a Target location, does not have a desk at a Target location and may travel to HQ up to 4 times a year.  A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member's core role may be performed either remote or onsite at a Target location 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.

Benefits Eligibility

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Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Application deadline is : 12/10/2026