About us
Target is an iconic brand, a Fortune 50 company and one of America's leading retailers. Target Technology Services is the behind-the-scenes powerhouse that fuels Target's commitment to cutting-edge innovation, delivering incredible value to guests online and in stores through a strong technology framework and high-performing teams.
Target Tech Overview
Every time a guest enters a Target store or browses Target.com, they experience the impact of Target's investments in technology and innovation. We are the technologists behind one of the most loved retail brands, delivering joy to millions of our guests, team members, and communities. Our global in-house technology team of engineers, data scientists, architects, and product managers strives to make Target the most convenient, safe, and joyful place to shop.
About Finance Technology
Finance Technology within Core Retail Services powers the financial backbone of Target's enterprise operations. Our platforms support critical business capabilities across Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Vendor Income, Treasury, Financial Planning, Core Accounting, Revenue & Receivables and Enterprise Financial Controls.
As Target accelerates modernization and AI-enabled transformation, Finance Technology is evolving from traditional transaction-processing systems into intelligent, connected finance ecosystems powered by cloud-native architectures, event-driven platforms, advanced analytics, and Agentic AI capabilities.
Key strategic initiatives include:
- Mainframe modernization and decomposition of legacy finance systems
- Intelligent matching and reconciliation platforms
- AI-assisted exception handling and dispute management
- Finance platform modernization using cloud-native and event-driven architectures
- Enterprise financial resiliency, scalability, and observability
- Embedded AI and automation across operational finance workflows
- Real-time financial insights and item-level financial capabilities
Job Description
As a Principal Engineer in Finance Technology, you are a strategic technology leader, thought partner, and trusted advisor to engineering, product, architecture, and business teams. You define and drive technology strategy across large-scale enterprise finance platforms and solve highly complex business and technical problems that span multiple domains and capabilities.
You will lead architecture modernization and intelligent finance transformation initiatives that directly influence Target's future Finance ecosystem. You will shape scalable engineering patterns, AI-enabled workflows, resilient platform strategies, and modernization roadmaps while mentoring senior engineers and technical leaders across the organization.
You will operate across domains such as Accounts Payable, Revenue & Receivables, Vendor Financial Operations, Transportation Payments, Financial Controls, and Enterprise Finance Platforms, bringing together distributed systems, cloud-native architecture, AI/ML, Agentic workflows, SAP ecosystems, event-driven platforms, and enterprise-scale operational excellence.
This role requires strong technical depth, enterprise influence, strategic thinking, and the ability to drive execution through ambiguity while aligning multiple product and engineering organizations toward common outcomes.
What You'll Do
Enterprise Technology Leadership
- Define long-term architecture and modernization strategy for Finance Technology platforms across multiple domains and portfolios
- Lead enterprise-wide transformation initiatives including mainframe modernization, intelligent finance workflows, cloud migration, and platform consolidation
- Drive architecture governance, engineering standards, resiliency strategies, and modernization roadmaps
- Establish reusable enterprise patterns for scalability, observability, reliability, and security
Intelligent Finance & AI Enablement
- Drive adoption of AI/ML and Agentic AI capabilities across finance operations including matching, reconciliation, exception management, dispute handling, forecasting, and financial insights
- Lead POCs and productionization of LLM-enabled and Agentic systems with measurable operational and productivity outcomes
- Partner with product and business teams to identify high-value finance workflows for intelligent automation
Architecture & Platform Engineering
- Architect cloud-native, event-driven, and microservices-based systems supporting high-scale financial operations
- Design resilient distributed systems leveraging Kafka, asynchronous processing, API-first integrations, and modern data architectures
- Guide engineering teams in implementing scalable backend platforms, integration frameworks, and enterprise APIs
- Drive engineering excellence across performance optimization, observability, operational resiliency, security, and cost efficiency
Strategic Influence & Partnership
- Partner closely with Finance business leaders, Product Management, UX, Architecture, Data Science, and Engineering teams to align technology strategy with business outcomes
- Influence organizational direction through architecture reviews, RFCs, ADRs, technical roadmaps, and executive communication
- Simplify highly complex technical concepts for senior leadership and non-technical stakeholders
- Build strong cross-functional alignment across enterprise platforms and partner ecosystems
Engineering Culture & Talent Development
- Mentor senior engineers, staff engineers, and emerging principal engineers
- Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, technical excellence, and continuous learning
- Lead engineering communities, architecture forums, and enterprise technical discussions
- Drive adoption of modern engineering practices including AI-assisted development, platform thinking, automation, and operational maturity
About You
Technical Leadership
- Ability to define and own enterprise-scale technical strategy and modernization roadmaps across multiple platforms and engineering teams
- Strong expertise in designing cloud-native distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and enterprise integration platforms
- Proven ability to lead architecture direction across large-scale modernization and transformation programs
Engineering Expertise
- Deep hands-on experience with modern backend technologies such as Java, Kotlin, Python, Spring Boot, and distributed data platforms
- Strong understanding of APIs, microservices, event streaming platforms (Kafka), relational and NoSQL databases, and enterprise integration patterns
- Experience building resilient, scalable, observable systems in high-volume enterprise environments
- Ability to translate complex finance business workflows into scalable technology solutions
AI / Intelligent Systems Experience
- Experience delivering production-grade AI/ML or LLM-enabled solutions with measurable business outcomes
- Knowledge of Agentic orchestration frameworks, retrieval architectures, evaluation pipelines, and AI governance patterns
- Understanding of LLMOps/MLOps practices, monitoring, safety controls, and operationalization of AI systems
Leadership & Communication
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to influence senior leadership and drive alignment across diverse organizations
- Strong mentoring, coaching, and organizational leadership capabilities
- Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguity and drive outcomes through influence
Preferred Qualifications
- 12+ years of software engineering experience with 3+ years in principal/staff architecture or enterprise technical leadership roles
- Experience leading enterprise modernization initiatives involving legacy decomposition and cloud transformation
- Experience building or scaling AI-enabled enterprise operational platforms
- Experience driving technical strategy in large retail, finance, or enterprise ecosystems
- Contributions to architecture communities, engineering forums, patents, whitepapers, open-source projects, or conference presentations are a plus
Why Join Us
This is an opportunity to help shape the future of Finance Technology at one of the world's leading retailers. You will influence enterprise-scale transformation initiatives, define the next generation of intelligent finance platforms, and help build Target's vision of a resilient, AI-powered Finance ecosystem.
You will work alongside exceptional engineers, architects, and business leaders solving some of the most complex and meaningful technology problems in retail finance today.