Data Platform Engineer

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.

About the role :

As a Principal Engineer on the Data Platform team, you will provide technical leadership and set the long-term architectural direction for how data is managed, governed, and observed across Target. This role is focused on influence at scale - shaping platforms, standards, and engineering practices that enable teams across the enterprise to build trusted, reliable, and compliant data products.

You will operate at the intersection of architecture, engineering excellence, and organizational alignment, ensuring the data platform foundation can support the scale, complexity, and regulatory needs of a large omni-channel retailer.

What you’ll do:

·Define and drive the technical vision and architecture for Target’s Data Platform.

·Influence platform strategy across multiple teams and domains by setting standards, patterns, and best practices for data management, governance, metadata, lineage, data quality, and observability.

·Partner closely with engineering leaders, product managers, and data teams to align platform capabilities with business and regulatory requirements.

·Evaluate trade-offs holistically across systems, balancing scalability, reliability, usability, and operational excellence.

·Lead design reviews for complex, cross-cutting initiatives and guide teams toward cohesive, long-term solutions.

·Mentor senior and staff-level engineers, raising the overall bar for technical decision-making and platform thinking.

·Serve as a technical thought leader, anticipating future needs and evolving the platform to support Target’s long-term data strategy.

About you

·Deep experience designing and building large-scale data platforms in complex enterprise environments.

·Strong expertise in data management and governance concepts, including metadata, lineage, data quality, and observability.

·Solid understanding of data fundamentals and distributed systems.

·Proven ability to influence technical direction across teams without direct authority.

·Experience establishing platform foundations that enable consistency, trust, and scale across diverse data use cases.

·Strong communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical partners.

·A systems thinker who can see the “sum of the parts” and drive cohesive, long-term platform outcomes.