Lead Data Engineer

About the Role:
As a Lead Data Engineer, you will serve as thetechnical anchorfor the engineering team, responsible for designing and developingscalable, high-performance data solutions. You willown and drive data architecturethat supports both functional and non-functional business needs, ensuringreliability, efficiency, and scalability.
Your expertise inbig data technologies, distributed systems, and cloud platformswill help shape the engineering roadmap and best practices fordata processing, analytics, and real-time data serving. You will play a key role inarchitecting and optimizing data pipelinesusingHadoop, Spark, Scala/Java, and cloud technologiesto support enterprise-wide data initiatives.
Additionally,experience with API development for serving low-latency dataandCustomer Data Platforms (CDP)will be a strong plus.

Key Responsibilities:

• Architect and buildscalable, high-performance data pipelinesanddistributed data processing solutionsusingHadoop, Spark, Scala/Java, and cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure).
• Design and implementreal-time and batch data processing solutions, ensuring data is efficiently processed and made available for analytical and operational use.
• Develop APIs and data servicesto exposelow-latency, high-throughputdata for downstream applications, enabling real-time decision-making.
• Optimize and enhancedata models, workflows, and processing frameworksto improve performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency.
• Drivedata governance, security, and compliancebest practices.
• Collaborate withdata scientists, product teams, and business stakeholdersto understand requirements and deliverdata-driven solutions.
• Lead thedesign, implementation, and lifecycle managementof data services and solutions.
• Stay up to date withemerging technologiesand drive adoption of best practices inbig data engineering, cloud computing, and API development.
• Providetechnical leadership and mentorshipto engineering teams, promoting best practices indata engineering and API design.

About You:

• 7+ years of experience in data engineering, software development, or distributed systems.
• Expertise in big data technologiessuch asHadoop, Spark, and distributed processing frameworks.
• Strong programming skills in Scala and/or Java(Python is a plus).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)and theirdata ecosystem(e.g., S3, BigQuery, Databricks, EMR, Snowflake, etc.).
• Proficiency in API developmentusingREST, GraphQL, or gRPCto serve real-time and batch data.
• Experience with real-time and streaming data architectures(Kafka, Flink, Kinesis, etc.).
• Strong knowledge ofdata modeling, ETL pipeline design, and performance optimization.
• Understanding ofdata governance, security, and compliancein large-scale data environments.
• Experience with Customer Data Platforms (CDP) or customer-centric data processingis a strong plus.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work incomplex, unstructured environments.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with experience working incross-functional teams.

Why Join Us?

• Work with cutting-edgebig data, API, and cloud technologiesin a fast-paced, collaborative environment.
• Influence and shape thefuture of data architecture and real-time data servicesat Target.
• Solvehigh-impact business problemsusingscalable, low-latency data solutions.
• Be part of a culture that valuesinnovation, learning, and growth.