Sr. Engineering Manager - Forward Deployed Engineering (AI Platforms)

The Sr. Engineering Manager - Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) will build and lead a customer-facing engineering team focused on accelerating adoption of Target’s AI Platform, including Agent Platform, Context Intelligence, and AI Developer Experience.

The FDE team partners directly with engineering and business teams to solve complex problems, provide architecture and implementation guidance, rapidly prototype AI-powered solutions, and translate customer learnings into reusable platform capabilities.

This role requires a combination of strong software engineering depth, AI and agentic systems expertise, technical leadership, customer orientation, and people leadership. You will work closely with Platform Engineering, Product, Security, Responsible AI, and business teams to accelerate AI adoption while ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with Target engineering standards.

As a Sr. Engineering Manager, you’ll take the lead as you…

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team of Forward Deployed Engineers, providing technical leadership, coaching, career development, and performance management.
• Establish the FDE engineering model and serve as the primary engineering engagement layer between AI Platform teams and platform consumers.
• Drive platform adoption through technical onboarding, architecture guidance, implementation support, developer enablement, and engineering best practices.
• Lead rapid discovery and prototyping of high-value AI solutions using Agent Platform, Context Intelligence, and related AI capabilities.
• Remain technically engaged through architecture decisions, design and code reviews, complex problem solving, and development of critical solutions when needed.
• Own engineering engagement through established support channels, ensuring requests are effectively triaged, resolved, or routed to Platform Engineering.
• Establish practical governance and reusable engineering patterns for agent development, context integration, evaluation, security, and Responsible AI.
• Partner with Platform Engineering to identify recurring customer needs and translate successful implementations into reusable platform capabilities.
• Drive continuous improvement in developer experience, documentation, self-service, platform adoption, and customer satisfaction.

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

• 4-year degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including 1-3+ years leading and managing engineering teams.
• Strong software engineering and architecture foundation with experience building and operating production systems.
• Experience with cloud-native applications, APIs, distributed systems, integrations, and modern software engineering practices.
• Experience with AI/ML technologies, including generative AI, Large Language Models, agentic systems, retrieval/context architectures, or related AI application patterns.
• Experience with developer platforms, frameworks, APIs, SDKs, or developer-facing technologies is preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous business and engineering problems into scalable technical solutions.
• Strong track record of working across engineering, product, and business teams in large enterprise technology environments.
• Deep understanding of Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, observability, reliability, and production engineering practices.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence technical teams, business partners, and senior leaders.
• Passion for developing engineers, building strong engineering cultures, and enabling other teams to succeed.

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 (https://corporate.target.com/about) .