Engineer - Email and Data Protection (Cybersecurity)

As an Engineer, you serve as a technical specialist delivering the engineering that powers the product. You develop insight into technical architecture and design while building robust, scalable, and secure software components. You solve engineering problems, balance the delivery of new capabilities with software quality

and reliability, and contribute to code reviews that maintain functional accuracy across the team. You learn the design and architecture of the platform, participate in team ceremonies and technical discussions, and grow your ability to influence how products and services are built and operated. You will use your technology acumen to provide input on new technologies and contribute to the design, lifecycle management, and total cost of ownership of services. You will participate in research and proof-of-concept initiatives, write and maintain code based on established designs, and help deliver high-performing, repeatable, and secure solutions.

With guidance from senior engineers, you will participate in construction, automation, debugging, testing, implementation, incident response, and operational support activities while following architectural and engineering best practices.

ABOUT THIS TEAM

The Email and Data Protection team builds and operates critical capabilities that protect Target’s team members, guests, applications, and information from malicious email content and data-related threats. The team owns and advances a layered email security platform that includes vended security products, internally developed services, and integrations across Target’s cybersecurity ecosystem.

A major focus of this role is Target’s real-time email data platform, which ingests, processes, scans, enriches, and routes enterprise email telemetry for security analysis. The platform integrates with Target’s Strelka file-scanning platform and Google Security Operations to deliver streaming data, detections, alerts, and investigative context to security teams.

In this role, you will help maintain and enhance the backend services, data pipelines, APIs, automated tests, and operational capabilities that make this platform reliable and effective.

Cybersecurity is a fast-changing engineering domain. Threat actors continue to adopt new automation and advanced AI techniques, which requires defenders to build adaptable systems, improve detection speed, and respond creatively to emerging risks.

This role provides an opportunity to apply strong software engineering fundamentals to meaningful work that helps protect a large-scale enterprise while developing valuable security domain knowledge.

Prior cybersecurity or email security experience is not required. This is a software engineering role within the Cybersecurity organization, and engineers with strong development fundamentals, curiosity, and an interest in distributed systems can grow successfully in the role., * Design, develop, test, and maintain backend services using Java, Spring Boot, and other modern languages and frameworks.

• Contribute to distributed and event-driven services that ingest, process, scan, enrich, and route enterprise email data in real time.
• Build and enhance integrations with vended email security products, Target’s Strelka platform,
• Google Security Operations, and related detection and alerting capabilities.
• Develop and maintain RESTful APIs, event-streaming components, data models, and service integrations using established engineering patterns.
• Write clean, maintainable code and participate actively in code reviews, design discussions, sprint ceremonies, and technical documentation.
• Create and maintain automated unit, integration, contract, and regression tests to improve software quality and delivery confidence.
• Investigate and resolve frequently encountered production issues involving application behavior, data processing, and system integrations, escalating complex issues when appropriate.
• Monitor service health, logs, metrics, alerts, and capacity. Contribute to improvements in reliability, performance, observability, and operational efficiency.
• Support database schema changes, data migrations, API updates, and backward-compatible service enhancements.
• Participate in CI/CD, infrastructure automation, release, change-management, incident-management, and disaster-recovery activities.
• Partner with engineers, cybersecurity analysts, product partners, vendors, and other stakeholders to understand needs and deliver effective technical solutions.
• Contribute to research and proof-of-concept efforts involving emerging technologies, including responsible use of AI-assisted engineering tools.
• Build knowledge of email processing, security platforms, and Target’s cybersecurity ecosystem through hands-on engineering, formal training, and self-directed learning.

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

Not everybody will meet every requirement. We would still like to hear from you if this role and its mission, * Four-year degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

• 1+ years of software development experience through professional work, internships, co-ops, substantial academic projects, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• Proficiency in at least one modern programming language, with experience or interest in developing Java applications.
• Familiarity with object-oriented programming, common data structures, algorithms, APIs, and software design fundamentals.
• Understanding of distributed programming concepts and the ability to apply them with guidance within your area of responsibility.
• Experience writing automated tests and debugging software using logs, development tools, and structured problem-solving techniques.
• Familiarity with relational databases, SQL, and basic data modeling concepts.
• Ability to learn an existing codebase, follow established engineering patterns, and deliver maintainable software components.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with curiosity about how complex systems behave.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills and the ability to collaborate with technical and non-technical partners.
• A commitment to software quality, security, operational excellence, and continuous learning.
• Familiarity with current and emerging technologies and a demonstrated ability to build domain-specific knowledge through training and self-directed education., * Experience with Java and Spring Boot through professional work, internships, coursework, or personal projects.
• Exposure to messaging or event-streaming technologies such as Kafka, Pub/Sub, RabbitMQ, or JMS.
• Familiarity with cloud-native development in Google Cloud Platform, AWS, or Azure.
• Exposure to Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, or infrastructure automation.
• Experience developing RESTful APIs or backend services.
• Familiarity with observability concepts, including logs, metrics, tracing, alerting, and service health monitoring.
• Interest in cybersecurity, email security, or highly available production systems.
• Familiarity with email or enterprise messaging concepts such as SMTP, MIME, message routing, or email authentication controls.
• Experience using AI-assisted software engineering tools responsibly to support learning, development, testing, or documentation.

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