Lead AI Engineer -- Advanced AI (applied ML, LLMs, agentic AI, ML Ops)

Pay 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.

JOIN TARGET AS A LEAD AI ENGINEER – ADVANCED AI

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:

Target’s Advanced AI team builds end-to-end AI/ML systems that create meaningful business value across the enterprise. These systems may be powered by LLMs, classical machine learning, or deep learning models, and are designed as scalable, reliable, production-grade applications, including agentic architectures where they add clear value.

As a Lead AI Engineer for Advanced AI, you will help design, build, deploy, and maintain AI/ML applications that support automation, insight, and action across core business workflows. You will work closely with Data Scientists, engineers, product partners, platform teams, security teams, and business stakeholders to turn ambiguous business problems into practical, scalable technical solutions.

In this role, you will provide hands-on technical leadership for AI engineering initiatives. You will contribute to architecture and design decisions, evaluate appropriate models, frameworks, and tools, write maintainable production-quality code, and help establish strong engineering practices across development, testing, deployment, observability, documentation, and ongoing support. You will help ensure AI applications are secure, reliable, maintainable, and aligned to Target’s enterprise standards for infrastructure, platform architecture, data handling, and operational readiness.

You will also partner with senior engineers and engineering leaders to shape technical approaches, identify implementation risks, resolve roadblocks, and support the evolution of reusable AI engineering patterns. This role requires curiosity and continuous learning, including staying current with developments in AI, machine learning, LLMs, agentic systems, and modern software engineering practices. A successful Lead AI Engineer will help deliver production-grade AI applications that create measurable business value while raising the technical quality and capability of the broader team.

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

About you:

• 4-year degree in Quantitative disciplines (Science, Tech, Engineering, Mathematics) or equivalent industry experience required; MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics or a related technical field preferred.
• 5+ years end to end applied machine learning and of hands-on experience developing AI/ML applications
• Experience building LLM-powered applications, agentic systems, applied machine learning solutions, data-intensive applications or intelligent automation capabilities
• Demonstrated strong programming proficiency with Python and experience with modern AI/ML or deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel, etc.
• Experience working with model APIs, prompt orchestration, agent development patterns, retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation frameworks, observability tools, cloud ML platforms, containers or orchestration technologies
• Strong understanding of system design, application architecture, model and framework tradeoffs, experimentation, evaluation strategy, performance optimization and production deployment considerations for AI systems
• Experience building scalable, maintainable, and well-tested services, APIs, data pipelines, applications or platforms
• Experience with version control, CI/CD, code review practices, documentation, operational monitoring and production support
• Ability to translate ambiguous business problems into clear technical approaches and collaborate with cross-functional partners to deliver practical solutions
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to engineers, applied data scientists, Product partners, business stakeholder and leaders
• Ability to mentor AI engineers, contribute to technical direction and raise the quality of engineering practices within the team
• Self-driven and results-oriented, with strong ownership, sound judgment and the ability to move quickly while maintaining high technical standards
• Collaborative team player with a commitment to continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and building reliable AI systems that create business value

This 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.

Benefits Eligibility

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

In 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 [email protected]. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.