Lead Engineer – Cryptography & Secrets

Lead Engineer

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.

As a Lead Engineer, you serve as the technical anchor for the engineering team that supports a product. You create, own and are responsible for the application architecture that best serves the product in its functional and non-functional needs. You identify and drive architectural changes to accelerate feature development or improve the quality of service (or both). You have deep and broad engineering skills and can stand up an architecture in its whole on your own, but you choose to influence a wider team by acting as a "force multiplier". Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.

We are seeking a Lead Engineer to design, build, and evolve our enterprise cryptography, PKI, and secrets management platforms. This role is ideal for someone who deeply understands cryptographic systems and enjoys building reliable, scalable services in a modern engineering environment.

You will lead technical strategy, mentor engineers, architect core security services, and partner with platform, cloud, identity, and application teams to ensure secure and seamless cryptographic capabilities across the enterprise.

What you'll do:

• Lead architecture and lifecycle management of cryptography, PKI, and secrets platforms
• Build and modernize services using Go or Java (proficiency in one required; both preferred)
• Integrate and operate PKI platforms (Keyfactor and/or Windows ADCS)
• Work with HSMs (Thales preferred)
• Establish standards, automation, and best practices
• Partner across cloud, platform, identity, and application teams
• Lead complex implementations and mentor engineers

About you:

• 4 year degree or equivalent experience
• 7+ years of software development experience
• Strong knowledge of cryptography, PKI, and secrets management
• Proficiency in Go or Java
• Experience with Keyfactor and/or Windows ADCS
• Experience with HSMs, Thales preferred
• Experience building scalable distributed systems

Work Arrangement:

This position follows Target's Hybrid/Flex for Your Day model, requiring a minimum of two days onsite per week at the designated Target headquarters location in Minnesota. Depending on role needs, work may be performed onsite or remotely within the United States. Work duties cannot be performed outside the country of the primary work location unless otherwise prescribed by Target.

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 candidate.accommodations@HRHelp.Target.com. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.