Lead Engineer - Email and Data Protection (Cybersecurity)

The pay range is $132,000.00 - $238,000.00 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 . 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 As a Lead Engineer, you will use your technology acumen and engineering leadership to shape, build, and sustain enterprise-scale capabilities. You will maintain deep knowledge of current and emerging technologies, evaluate their viability within Target's environment, and guide decisions based on security, scalability, maintainability, reliability, and total cost of ownership. You will lead technical design, research, proof-of-concept work, testing strategy, debugging, and lifecycle management for services with broad enterprise impact. In complex and unstructured situations, you will serve as an expert resource, establish reusable engineering patterns and standards, and help teams deliver secure, high-performing, and resilient solutions. ABOUT THIS TEAM The Email and Data Protection team protects Target's team members, guests, systems, and data from threats delivered through email and other business communication channels. We engineer, manage, and operate Target's enterprise email security ecosystem, including vended security platforms, internally developed services, and advanced integrations with Target's Strelka analysis platform, Google Security Operations, and other cybersecurity capabilities. Our work spans both software engineering and security operations. We build and enhance scalable services that ingest, process, scan, enrich, and route real-time email data, while maintaining the availability, reliability, and effectiveness of the security controls that protect Target every day. We support cybersecurity partners with actionable data, alerts, investigative capabilities, and operational expertise. Because email security controls directly support business communications, we balance strong protection with the need to keep Target operating efficiently. We investigate security events, resolve platform and data-processing issues, tune controls, and partner across the business to reduce risk while minimizing unnecessary disruption. Cybersecurity is a rapidly evolving engineering domain. Threat actors are increasingly using sophisticated automation and artificial intelligence, creating meaningful opportunities to build adaptable platforms and modern defenses at enterprise scale. Deep cybersecurity experience is not required. Strong platform, backend, and distributed-systems experience can translate successfully into this engineering leadership role within Target's Cybersecurity organization. CORE RESPONSIBILITIES Provide technical leadership for the engineering, operation, reliability, and lifecycle management of Target's enterprise email security platforms and supporting services. Lead the design, development, and maintenance of scalable backend services using Java, Spring Boot, and other modern languages and frameworks. Lead the design and enhancement of scalable services that ingest, process, scan, enrich, and route real-time email data for security detection, investigation, and response. Design and enhance integrations with vended email security products, Target's Strelka platform. Google Security Operations, and other security detection, alerting, and response capabilities. Establish engineering patterns and standards for APIs, event streams, data models, automated testing, observability, resiliency, and secure service development. Lead technical design reviews, code reviews, proof-of-concept efforts, and decisions involving platform architecture and technology selection. Establish effective operational practices for monitoring, incident response, problem management, disaster recovery, capacity planning, and production readiness. Partner with cybersecurity, messaging, infrastructure, and business teams to investigate security events, resolve complex platform issues, and provide reliable data and capabilities to security partners. Continuously improve and tune security controls, platform reliability, and operational processes to reduce risk while minimizing unnecessary disruption to legitimate business communications. Guide database schema evolution, data migrations, API contracts, and backward-compatible platform changes. Advance CI/CD, automated unit and integration testing, infrastructure automation, and modern DevOps practices. Coach and mentor engineers, raise the technical capabilities of the team, and foster a culture of ownership, learning, and continuous improvement. Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI-assisted and agentic engineering tools, and apply them responsibly to improve engineering quality and delivery Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs. ABOUT YOU Not everybody will meet every requirement. We would still like to hear from you if this role and its mission interest you. Four-year degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent p