Senior Engineering Manager - Kafka Platform, Data Contract

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. 

 
The Sr. Engineering Manager (SEM) is responsible for a managing a team of engineers. This role is accountable for leading a team, developing code, deploying and managing in production. You will be called upon to be the technical representative for your team during cross-team collaborative efforts and planning. Success in this role will require strong and innovative approaches to problem solving, great technical leadership, excellent communication (written and verbal, formal and informal), flexibility, accountability and a self-motivated working style with attention to detail. 

About this Team: 

Kafka powers analytics, operational systems, and AI across Target. As ingestion shifts left, enforceable schema governance and data quality at the edge are critical. This role owns the strategy and execution of a scalable, automated schema management platform that reduces producer friction, enforces enterprise standards, and strengthens data trust across domains. 

In this role, you will: 

• Lead the evolution of data contracts and schema standards across Avro, JSON, and Protobuf, enabling reliable, scalable producer–consumer integrations. 

• Drive production-grade reliability for schema and ingestion services, including resilience, observability, and SLA alignment. 

• Partner across platform and data engineering teams to modernize ingestion patterns that power analytics and AI. 

• Guide the structured migration and sunset of Autobahn while maintaining stability, reliability, and cost discipline. 

This role directly influences Target’s enterprise data posture and AI-readiness at scale. 

This leader will: 

• Define and execute a multi-year platform vision grounded in strong product thinking, contract-first architecture, and enterprise governance standards. 

• Lead technical strategy and hands-on delivery, driving architecture decisions aligned to Target platform and security standards. 

• Champion reliability, quality, and operational discipline across development and production operations. 

• Influence enterprise direction, partner with Product to shape roadmap, and drive Agile and DevOps excellence. 

• Build and develop high-performing engineering teams, providing coaching, staffing strategy, and performance leadership. 

Job duties may change at any time due to business needs. 

 
About you: 

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 1–3 years of people leadership or equivalent delivery ownership. 

• Proven experience building and operating cloud-native, distributed systems and high-performance APIs at scale. 

• Strong background in resilient production architecture, reliability engineering, and raising engineering standards. 

• Demonstrated product leadership (roadmaps, OKRs, migration execution) and experience with contract-driven or schema-governed platforms. 

• Track record of building and developing high-performing teams within large enterprise environments. 

• Ability to influence cross-domain stakeholders and drive alignment across complex ecosystems. 

• Strong communication skills with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts for diverse audiences. 

• Deep understanding of Agile, CI/CD, and incremental value delivery. 

• Preferred: knowledge of Target infrastructure and platform services, vendor management experience, and leading geographically distributed teams. 

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_E

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.