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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Principal Engineer - Core Platform Services - **Company:** Target Brands, Inc. - **Location:** Minneapolis, MN, United States - **Experience:** Experienced - **Salary:** $168,000 - $303,000 - **Contract:** Temporary contract - **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Software Debugging, Programming Tools, Distributed Systems, Software Engineering, Large Language Models, Agentic-AI, Event Driven Architecture, Kubernetes, Apache Kafka, Restful APIs, Golang, Microservices - **Published:** November 8, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.minneapoliscareersite.com/job.asp?id=3505229240&tx=IT8174TYZ&pt=1&aff=0B19D771-A501-4A5E-8338-2A822B784D54&utm_source=Job%20Feed&utm_medium=textkernel&utm_campaign=DE&utm_term=0B19D771-A501-4A5E-8338-2A822B784D54 ## About the Role You are a technical leader who leads through depth and influence. You are energized by platform architecture, distributed systems, and applied AI, and equally by helping other engineers grow in scope and impact., * 4 year degree or equivalent experience. Continuing education to maintain thorough knowledge of technical domains along with staying current in latest technologies * 12+ years of experience in technology development or services * 4+ years of experience in strategic planning and setting technical direction * Architecting and operating internal platforms, developer tooling, or shared services used by other teams * Designing multi-tenant systems with extension points that other teams build against * Building and securing production LLM or agentic systems, including evaluation, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop design * Supporting and operating 24x7 business-critical capabilities * Designing and deploying scalable APIs, microservices, and event-driven systems (e.g., Kafka) * Depth in one or more platform languages such as Golang, and orchestration with Kubernetes * Communicating complex technical solutions clearly to technical and non-technical audiences * Working effectively across multiple teams in a product-oriented environment, * In-depth knowledge of system design, build, test, and operational debugging practices * Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering production distributed systems at scale * A track record of sustained technical influence and standard-setting across multiple engineering teams * Commitment to continuous learning and staying current with evolving technologies ## Description As a Principal Engineer, you are the senior-most individual-contributor technical leader on the Core Platform Services team. You partner with the Senior Engineering Manager and the team's Product Manager to set the technical vision, architecture, and standards for the team, and to remove friction across the full builder experience. This is a hands-on role: you lead through depth, design, and influence rather than through direct reports. Principal Engineers operate at the overall Infrastructure level. While you are assigned to Core Platform Services, you are expected to contribute meaningfully to broader Infrastructure priorities, including problems that lie outside your team. You will be accountable for * Technical direction. Owning the end-to-end architecture of Core Platform Services as it grows, from Action Center and agentic remediation today to the features and integrations that come next, along with the APIs and MCP servers that other platform teams and AI agents build on. * The hardest problems. Designing multi-tenant systems that many independent teams can extend without breaking each other, and AI agents that can safely change code for builders. That means least-privilege access, a clear record of every change, and human review. * Platform as a product. Partnering with the Product Manager to treat builder experience as an internal product, with self-service by default, adoption you can measure, and services that work for builders with or without a deep engineering background. * Engineering standards. Setting technical standards and leading design and architecture reviews across the team and partner platform teams. * Infrastructure impact. Contributing to Infrastructure-wide technical priorities beyond Core Platform Services. * Enterprise influence. Building relationships with Principal Engineers across Target to learn where builders hit the most friction and where the biggest opportunities are, and working with the Product Manager to turn what you learn into the roadmap. You also represent Core Platform Services in enterprise architecture forums. Success in this role requires exceptional technical judgment, clear communication, operational discipline, and the ability to drive clarity and consensus in ambiguous, high-scale environments. What We're Looking For This role is defined by three pillars. We expect a Principal Engineer to be outstanding across all three: * Technical Depth. Deep, current expertise in distributed systems and multi-tenant platform design, including APIs and extension models, durable workflow orchestration, event-driven systems, and identity and authorization. Hands-on experience with LLM and agentic systems, including tool use and MCP, evaluation, and guardrails. You can go deep enough to debug the system and broad enough to shape the platform. * Technical Leadership. Proven ability to influence across an organization without direct authority. You set standards, build architectural consensus across teams that do not report to you, and mentor senior engineers. You make the engineers around you better and bring clarity to ambiguous, contested problems. * Platform / Product. A product mindset toward internal platforms. You judge success by adoption and builder experience, and you design for self-service so builders can get what they need without filing a request. Why This Role Is Compelling This role sits at the center of one of Target's top enterprise priorities. Every hour of manual work this team removes is an hour returned to builders across Target. You are joining at a turning point. Target is moving from a sequential software development lifecycle, where work passes from one stage and one team to the next, to an AI-driven development lifecycle (AI-DLC), where builders and AI agents plan, build, test, and fix in continuous loops. As Principal Engineer, you will define how AI agents safely change code across more than 5,000 applications. You will * Shape how thousands of builders across Target create software, from engineers to product managers, designers, and data scientists * Find and remove the biggest sources of friction in how Target builds software * Lead the shift from "file a ticket and wait" to AI agents that resolve platform work directly * Build the shared foundations every other platform team depends on If you are motivated by scale, impact, and deep technical challenges, this role offers all three. What Success Looks Like Within 6 to 12 months, you will have: * Ratified a clear architecture and technical roadmap for Core Platform Services, shaped with Principal Engineers across Target and the Product Manager, and adopted by the platform teams that build on it * Established the remediation guide framework as the way multiple platform domains deliver fixes to builders * Delivered agentic remediation in production that builders and leadership trust * Measurably reduced builder time to completion and eliminated duplicated tooling across platform teams * Strengthened the senior engineering bench through design leadership, mentorship, and durable technical standards * Made a visible, meaningful contribution to at least one Infrastructure-wide priority beyond Core Platform Services Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.