Sr. Engineering Manager - Forward Deployed Engineering (AI Platforms)
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What you'll do
- Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team of Forward Deployed Engineers, providing technical leadership, coaching, career development, and performance management.
- Establish the FDE engineering model and serve as the primary engineering engagement layer between AI Platform teams and platform consumers.
- Drive platform adoption through technical onboarding, architecture guidance, implementation support, developer enablement, and engineering best practices.
- Lead rapid discovery and prototyping of high-value AI solutions using Agent Platform, Context Intelligence, and related AI capabilities.
- Remain technically engaged through architecture decisions, design and code reviews, complex problem solving, and development of critical solutions when needed.
- Own engineering engagement through established support channels, ensuring requests are effectively triaged, resolved, or routed to Platform Engineering.
- Establish practical governance and reusable engineering patterns for agent development, context integration, evaluation, security, and Responsible AI.
- Partner with Platform Engineering to identify recurring customer needs and translate successful implementations into reusable platform capabilities.
- Drive continuous improvement in developer experience, documentation, self-service, platform adoption, and customer satisfaction.
What they're looking for
- 4-year degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
- 7+ years of software engineering experience, including 1–3+ years leading and managing engineering teams.
- Strong software engineering and architecture foundation with experience building and operating production systems.
- Experience with cloud-native applications, APIs, distributed systems, integrations, and modern software engineering practices.
- Experience with AI/ML technologies, including generative AI, Large Language Models, agentic systems, retrieval/context architectures, or related AI application patterns.
- Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous business and engineering problems into scalable technical solutions.
- Strong track record of working across engineering, product, and business teams in large enterprise technology environments.
- Deep understanding of Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, observability, reliability, and production engineering practices.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence technical teams, business partners, and senior leaders.
- Passion for developing engineers, building strong engineering cultures, and enabling other teams to succeed.
Nice to have
- Experience with developer platforms, frameworks, APIs, SDKs, or developer-facing technologies is preferred.
Summarised by NextRaise from the employer’s description, which follows in full below.
Full description from employer
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.
JOIN TARGET AS A SR ENGINEERING MANAGER - FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEERING
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 – Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) will build and lead a customer-facing engineering team focused on accelerating adoption of Target's AI Platform, including Agent Platform, Context Intelligence, and AI Developer Experience.
The FDE team partners directly with engineering and business teams to solve complex problems, provide architecture and implementation guidance, rapidly prototype AI-powered solutions, and translate customer learnings into reusable platform capabilities.
This role requires a combination of strong software engineering depth, AI and agentic systems expertise, technical leadership, customer orientation, and people leadership. You will work closely with Platform Engineering, Product, Security, Responsible AI, and business teams to accelerate AI adoption while ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with Target engineering standards.
As a Sr. Engineering Manager, you'll take the lead as you…
- Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team of Forward Deployed Engineers, providing technical leadership, coaching, career development, and performance management.
- Establish the FDE engineering model and serve as the primary engineering engagement layer between AI Platform teams and platform consumers.
- Drive platform adoption through technical onboarding, architecture guidance, implementation support, developer enablement, and engineering best practices.
- Lead rapid discovery and prototyping of high-value AI solutions using Agent Platform, Context Intelligence, and related AI capabilities.
- Remain technically engaged through architecture decisions, design and code reviews, complex problem solving, and development of critical solutions when needed.
- Own engineering engagement through established support channels, ensuring requests are effectively triaged, resolved, or routed to Platform Engineering.
- Establish practical governance and reusable engineering patterns for agent development, context integration, evaluation, security, and Responsible AI.
- Partner with Platform Engineering to identify recurring customer needs and translate successful implementations into reusable platform capabilities.
- Drive continuous improvement in developer experience, documentation, self-service, platform adoption, and customer satisfaction.
Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.
About you
- 4-year degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
- 7+ years of software engineering experience, including 1–3+ years leading and managing engineering teams.
- Strong software engineering and architecture foundation with experience building and operating production systems.
- Experience with cloud-native applications, APIs, distributed systems, integrations, and modern software engineering practices.
- Experience with AI/ML technologies, including generative AI, Large Language Models, agentic systems, retrieval/context architectures, or related AI application patterns.
- Experience with developer platforms, frameworks, APIs, SDKs, or developer-facing technologies is preferred.
- Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous business and engineering problems into scalable technical solutions.
- Strong track record of working across engineering, product, and business teams in large enterprise technology environments.
- Deep understanding of Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, observability, reliability, and production engineering practices.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence technical teams, business partners, and senior leaders.
- Passion for developing engineers, building strong engineering cultures, and enabling other teams to succeed.
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_EAmericans 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.
Application deadline is : 10/08/2026Company
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