Lead Data 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 aLead Data Engineer, you will serve as thetechnical anchorfor the engineering team, responsible for designing and developingscalable, high-performance data solutions. You willown and drive data architecturethat supports both functional and non-functional business needs, ensuringreliability, efficiency, and scalability.
Your expertise inbig data technologies, distributed systems, and cloud platformswill help shape the engineering roadmap and best practices fordata processing, analytics, and real-time data serving. You will play a key role inarchitecting and optimizing data pipelinesusingHadoop, Spark, Scala/Java, and cloud technologiesto support enterprise-wide data initiatives.
Additionally,experience with API development for serving low-latency dataandCustomer Data Platforms (CDP)will be a strong plus.

Key Responsibilities:

• Architect and buildscalable, high-performance data pipelinesanddistributed data processing solutionsusingHadoop, Spark, Scala/Java, and cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure).

• Design and implementreal-time and batch data processing solutions, ensuring data is efficiently processed and made available for analytical and operational use.

• Develop APIs and data servicesto exposelow-latency, high-throughputdata for downstream applications, enabling real-time decision-making.

• Optimize and enhancedata models, workflows, and processing frameworksto improve performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency.

• Drivedata governance, security, and compliancebest practices.

• Collaborate withdata scientists, product teams, and business stakeholdersto understand requirements and deliverdata-driven solutions.

• Lead thedesign, implementation, and lifecycle managementof data services and solutions.

• Stay up to date withemerging technologiesand drive adoption of best practices inbig data engineering, cloud computing, and API development.

• Providetechnical leadership and mentorshipto engineering teams, promoting best practices indata engineering and API design.

About You:

• 7+ years of experience in data engineering, software development, or distributed systems.

• Expertise in big data technologiessuch asHadoop, Spark, and distributed processing frameworks.

• Strong programming skills in Scala and/or Java(Python is a plus).

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)and theirdata ecosystem(e.g., S3, BigQuery, Databricks, EMR, Snowflake, etc.).

• Proficiency in API developmentusingREST, GraphQL, or gRPCto serve real-time and batch data.

• Experience with real-time and streaming data architectures(Kafka, Flink, Kinesis, etc.).

• Strong knowledge ofdata modeling, ETL pipeline design, and performance optimization.

• Understanding ofdata governance, security, and compliancein large-scale data environments.

• Experience with Customer Data Platforms (CDP) or customer-centric data processingis a strong plus.

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work incomplex, unstructured environments.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with experience working incross-functional teams.

Why Join Us?

• Work with cutting-edgebig data, API, and cloud technologiesin a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

• Influence and shape thefuture of data architecture and real-time data servicesat Target.

• Solvehigh-impact business problemsusingscalable, low-latency data solutions.

• Be part of a culture that valuesinnovation, learning, and growth.