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.
Senior Engineer — Database Experience Platform
About the Role
As a Senior Engineer on the Database Experience (DBX) team, you will own and evolve the platform that powers managed database infrastructure for hundreds of engineering teams across Target. The DBX platform manages multiple RDBMS and NoSQL database technologies across on-prem Virtual Machines, Kubernetes, and GCP.
You will work across the platform's core backend services — workflow automation, inventory, and lifecycle orchestration. Core responsibilities are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.
Core Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate scalable backend services that drive database lifecycle automation — provisioning, upgrades, HA conversion, snapshots, and decommission.
- Own systems end-to-end: design, implementation, deployment, and production support.
- Build and evolve durable Temporal workflows, including correctness, replay safety, and versioning for in-flight migrations.
- Contribute to platform modernization — migrating legacy automation to Temporal and integrating with next-generation infrastructure platforms.
- Maintain and support CI/CD pipelines, including build configuration and test automation
- Participate in design and code reviews; influence engineering standards and technical direction.
- Triage operational issues, improve observability, and eliminate repeat occurrences.
- Collaborate with DBAs, platform engineers, and product stakeholders to translate operational requirements into reliable, scalable solutions.
About You
Required
- 4-year degree or equivalent experience
- 5+ years of backend software engineering
- Strong proficiency in Java/Spring Boot or similar JVM frameworks
- Experience designing and building REST APIs and distributed systems
- Proven ability to own systems in production, including troubleshooting and reliability improvements
- Strong collaboration and communication skills
Helpful But Not Required
- Production Temporal experience — workflow versioning and replay determinism
- Familiarity with API-driven automation
- Understanding of infrastructure performance and topology concerns relevant to stateful database workloads
- Experience in creating and supporting UI/UX for internal platforms, including React/TypeScript and design systems
- Kafka producer/consumer patterns
- JPA/Hibernate database schema design
- Spock/Groovy testing
- Kubernetes familiarity (StatefulSets, PVCs, pod disruption budgets)
- Observability practices — metrics, distributed tracing, SLOs
Technologies
Java · Spring Boot · Temporal · Apache Kafka · JPA/Hibernate · Flyway · PostgreSQL · Cassandra · MongoDB · Redis · ElasticSearch · Kubernetes · GCP · Gradle · Vela CI · Micrometer/Grafana
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
Please paste this url into your preferred browser to learn about benefits eligibility for this role: https://tgt.biz/BenefitsForYou_DAmericans 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.
Skills Required
- 4-year degree or equivalent experience
- 5+ years of backend software engineering
- Strong proficiency in Java/Spring Boot or similar JVM frameworks
- Experience designing and building REST APIs and distributed systems
- Proven ability to own systems in production, including troubleshooting and reliability improvements
- Strong collaboration and communication skills
- Production Temporal experience (workflow versioning and replay determinism)
- Familiarity with API-driven automation
- Understanding of infrastructure performance and topology concerns for stateful database workloads
- Experience creating/supporting UI/UX for internal platforms (React/TypeScript, design systems)
- Kafka producer/consumer patterns
- JPA/Hibernate database schema design
- Spock/Groovy testing
- Kubernetes familiarity (StatefulSets, PVCs, pod disruption budgets)
- Observability practices (metrics, distributed tracing, SLOs)
Target Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Target and has not been reviewed or approved by Target.
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Healthcare Strength — Health benefits are accessible to hourly team members at relatively low hour thresholds and include no‑cost, 24/7 virtual medical care and expanded mental‑health support. This breadth is positioned as a relative strength compared to typical retail offerings.
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Retirement Support — Retirement programs include a dollar‑for‑dollar 401(k) match with immediate vesting and options like Roth 401(k) and stock purchase. These features strengthen long‑term savings for a wide range of roles.
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Parental & Family Support — Family support includes paid family leave, backup care, and reimbursements for adoption and surrogacy. These resources complement paid time off and holidays for eligible team members.
Target Insights
What We Do
Target is an American retailing company providing access to a wide selection of products such as furniture, electronics, toys, and more. Target is one of the world’s most recognized brands and one of America’s leading retailers. We make Target our guests’ preferred shopping destination by offering outstanding value, inspiration, innovation and an exceptional guest experience that no other retailer can deliver. Target is committed to responsible corporate citizenship, ethical business practices, environmental stewardship and generous community support. Since 1946, we have given 5 percent of our profits back to our communities. Our goal is to work as one team to fulfill our unique brand promise to our guests, wherever and whenever they choose to shop.
