{"id":3042461,"url":"https://alion.io/job/target-principal-engineer-merchandising-capabilities","title":"Principal Engineer - Merchandising Capabilities","company":{"id":3684,"name":"Target","domain":"target.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/target","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":99,"open_postings":284,"ghost_share":0.025,"stale_share":0.173,"repost_share":0.046,"time_to_fill_p50_days":8,"computed_at":"2026-10-24T06:02:35Z"}},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Brooklyn Park, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":168000,"max":303000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":303000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":12,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-21T23:10:37Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-21","last_verified_at":"2026-10-24T04:43:18Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"The pay range is $168,000.00 - $303,000.00Pay is based on several factors which vary based on position. These include labor markets and in some instances may include education, work experience and certifications. In addition to your pay, Target cares about and invests in you as a team member, so that you can take care of yourself and your family. Target offers eligible team members and their dependents comprehensive health benefits and programs, which may include medical, vision, dental, life insurance and more, to help you and your family take care of your whole selves. Other benefits for eligible team members include 401(k), employee discount, short term disability, long term disability, paid sick leave, paid national holidays, and paid vacation. Find competitive benefits from financial and education to well-being and beyond at https://corporate.target.com/careers/benefits.\nAbout us:\nWorking 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. \nAs a Principal Engineer you set the strategy for software development and/or infrastructure engineering at Target. You set the direction for how software and infrastructure engineering efforts will be designed, developed, and operationalized across multiple portfolios and drives adoption across Target Tech. You lead and approve software and infrastructure engineering efforts to meet functional and non-functional requirements. You are a thought leader and mentor for internal and external technical talent and actively contribute to the external technical community.\nAbout this Team:\nThe Merchandising Capabilities team builds and evolves foundational technology that enables Target to plan, manage, and execute merchandising experiences at scale as part of Target’s leading with Merch enterprise priority. We partner across product, engineering, data, and business teams to deliver reliable, secure, and high-performing capabilities that support core merchandising workflows, including pricing and promotions. Our focus is on reusable platforms and APIs, clear domain boundaries, consistent data and business rules, and architecture that can adapt as Target’s business needs evolve.\nUse your skills, experience and talents to be a part of groundbreaking thinking and visionary goals. As a Principal Engineer, you’ll take the lead as you…\nSet the long-term technical strategy and architecture for merchandising capabilities, aligning platform investments and engineering roadmaps to business priorities across multiple teams and portfolios.\nLead the design and evolution of scalable, resilient, secure, and highly available services and APIs that support pricing, promotions, and other merchandising workflows across Target’s technology ecosystem.\nDrive sound domain and data architecture, including service boundaries, integration patterns, data contracts, business-rule ownership, and consistency across systems; guide teams toward solutions that are reusable and fit for enterprise scale.\nEstablish engineering standards and reference architectures for API design, event-driven integration, cloud-native development, observability, performance, reliability, security, and operational readiness.\nPartner with product and business leaders, Enterprise Architecture, and engineering teams to translate business strategy into technical direction; evaluate trade-offs, quantify cost and risk, and use prototypes or proofs of concept to validate major decisions.\nAnticipate and address cross-platform technical risks, complexity, and technology lifecycle needs; lead modernization and simplification while balancing near-term delivery with long-term maintainability.\nChampion agile engineering and DevOps practices, including automated testing, continuous delivery, production health, incident learning, and measurable service-level objectives.\nProvide technical leadership across teams through architecture reviews, design guidance, coaching, and mentorship; build alignment without relying on direct authority and help grow technical talent.\nCore responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.\nAbout you:\nFour-year degree in a related field or equivalent experience, with a commitment to continuous learning and staying current with relevant engineering practices and technologies.\n12+ years of experience in technology development, software engineering, or technology services, including delivery of complex, production-grade systems.\n4+ years of experience setting technical strategy, shaping architecture, and influencing engineering direction across teams or portfolios.\nDeep experience designing distributed systems and service-oriented architectures, including APIs, integration patterns, data modeling, and systems with demanding scalability, availability, performance, and reliability requirements.\nExperience with cloud technologies, containerized workloads and orchestration (such as Kubernetes), CI/CD, infrastructure automation, observability, and production operations.\nStrong programming and data technology experience, such as Java, SQL and NoSQL databases, and Python, along with the ability to assess technologies and select fit-for-purpose solutions.\nAbility to understand business fundamentals, connect technology choices to business outcomes, and communicate the financial, operational, and delivery trade-offs of architectural decisions.\nDemonstrated technical leadership, influence, collaboration, problem solving, planning, and organizational skills; able to build alignment across teams and mentor engineers at different levels.\nExcellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.\nExperience in retail, merchandising, pricing, promotions, or other high-volume transaction and decisioning domains is a plus.\nThis position will operate as a Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement based on Target’s needs. A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member’s core role will need to be performed both onsite at the Target HQ MN location the role is assigned to and virtually, depending upon what your role, team and tasks require for that day. Work duties cannot be performed outside of the country of the primary work location, unless otherwise prescribed by Target. Click here if you are curious to learn more about Minnesota.\nBenefits Eligibility\nPlease paste this url into your preferred browser to learn about benefits eligibility for this role: https://tgt.biz/BenefitsForYou_FAmericans with Disabilities Act (ADA)\nIn compliance with state and federal laws, Target will make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please reach out to -accommodation-relatedrequests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7161,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":12,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Continuous learning","Life insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Retail & Shop Systems","Online Groceries"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-21T23:10:37Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":88,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.879,"p_room":1,"age_days":2,"expected_fill_days":8,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-24T06:02:35Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":303000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/target-principal-engineer-merchandising-capabilities","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/target-principal-engineer-merchandising-capabilities.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-24T06:34:04Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":9514,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-25T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":3684},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3684"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ftarget-principal-engineer-merchandising-capabilities"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ftarget-principal-engineer-merchandising-capabilities"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ftarget-principal-engineer-merchandising-capabilities"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/target-principal-engineer-merchandising-capabilities\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ftarget-principal-engineer-merchandising-capabilities"}]}