Interested in this MLOps Engineer role at Target?
Apply Now →Skills & Technologies
About This Role
The pay range is $168,000\.00 \- $356,000\.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.
PRINCIPAL ENGINEER – AI PLATFORMS
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.
Target's AI Platform organization is building the next generation of enterprise AI capabilities that enable teams to develop, deploy, govern, and operate Machine Learning and Generative AI solutions at scale. Our platform powers AI innovation across the enterprise by providing secure, scalable, and reusable capabilities that accelerate development while maintaining enterprise standards for reliability, governance, and operational excellence.
As a Principal Engineer – ML Operations Platform, you will provide technical leadership in defining the architecture and evolution of our enterprise machine learning platform. You will work across engineering, data science, infrastructure, security, and product organizations to establish scalable patterns for developing, deploying, monitoring, and governing machine learning systems throughout their lifecycle.
This role is ideal for a technology leader who enjoys solving complex platform challenges, influencing engineering strategy, and building capabilities that enable hundreds of engineers and data scientists to deliver AI solutions efficiently and safely.
About the Role:
As a Principal Engineer, you will define the long\-term architecture and technical direction for Target's ML Operations Platform. You will establish enterprise\-wide standards for machine learning lifecycle management, deployment, governance, observability, and operational excellence while partnering with cross\-functional engineering teams to modernize AI platform capabilities. You will influence architecture across multiple organizations, mentor senior engineers, evaluate emerging technologies, and guide strategic platform investments that improve developer productivity and accelerate AI adoption.
Key responsibilities include:
- Define the long\-term technical strategy and architecture for the enterprise ML Operations Platform.
- Design scalable, secure, and resilient cloud\-native platforms supporting machine learning workloads.
- Establish best practices for model development, deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management.
- Lead architecture for enterprise machine learning infrastructure supporting batch, streaming, and real\-time inference.
- Drive adoption of cloud\-native technologies, Kubernetes, and modern platform engineering practices.
- Define standards for model governance, observability, reliability, explainability, and responsible AI.
- Partner with infrastructure, security, and engineering teams to improve platform scalability, performance, and operational efficiency.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend architectural approaches that improve platform capabilities.
- Mentor engineers and influence technical direction across multiple engineering organizations.
Core responsibilities of this job are articulated within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.
About You:
- MS in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical field with relevant software engineering experience
- Extensive experience designing and delivering large\-scale cloud\-native platforms or distributed systems
- Deep experience building and operating enterprise machine learning platforms and MLOps capabilities
- Strong understanding of machine learning lifecycle management, deployment strategies, observability and production operations
- Demonstrated experience with machine learning platforms and tooling such as Vertex AI, Kubeflow, MLflow, and/or equivalent technologies
- Experience building developer platforms or internal platform products
- Experience with distributed training, GPU infrastructure, and large\-scale inference platforms
- Experience with feature management, model governance, and responsible AI practices.
- Familiarity with Generative AI platforms and infrastructure supporting foundation model workloads
- Experience with Terraform, GitOps, service mesh technologies, and platform automation
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and leading enterprise\-scale modernization initiatives
- Expertise designing Kubernetes\-based platforms supporting AI and machine learning workloads
- Strong understanding of software engineering best practices including CI/CD, infrastructure as code, observability, testing, and automation
- Experience defining technical strategy, architectural standards and engineering best practices across multiple teams
- Excellent communication and influencing skills with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to engineering and business leaders
This position may be considered for a Remote or Hybrid (known internally at Target as "Flex for Your Day") work arrangement based on Target's needs. A Remote work arrangement means the team member works full\-time from home or an alternate location that's not a Target location, does not have a desk at a Target location and may travel to HQ up to 4 times a year. A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member's core role may be performed either remote or onsite at a Target location 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.Benefits Eligibility
Please paste this url into your preferred browser to learn about benefits eligibility for this role: https://tgt.biz/BenefitsForYou\_FAmericans 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.
Application deadline is : 08/20/2026
Salary Context
This $168K-$356K range is above the 75th percentile for MLOps Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $177K across 20 roles with salary data).
View full MLOps Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
MLOps Engineers build the infrastructure that keeps ML models running in production. They own CI/CD pipelines for model deployment, monitoring for data drift and model degradation, and the tooling that lets data scientists ship faster. If ML Engineers build the models, MLOps Engineers build the roads those models travel on.
The job is fundamentally about reliability and velocity. Data scientists want to iterate fast. Product teams want stable predictions. Your job is to make both happen simultaneously. That means building deployment pipelines that catch regressions before they hit production, monitoring systems that alert on data drift before it degrades model performance, and self-service tooling that lets data scientists deploy without filing a ticket.
Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, MLOps Engineer positions make up 1% of the market. At Target, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
MLOps demand tracks closely with production ML adoption. As more companies move models from notebooks to production, the need for MLOps grows. The role is well-established at large tech companies and growing fast at mid-stage startups that are hitting the 'our models work in notebooks but break in production' phase.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week involves: debugging a model deployment that's serving stale predictions, building a new monitoring dashboard for a feature team, writing Terraform for GPU-enabled inference clusters, reviewing pull requests for the ML platform's CI/CD pipeline, and meeting with data scientists to understand their pain points. You're the bridge between ML and infrastructure.
MLOps demand tracks closely with production ML adoption. As more companies move models from notebooks to production, the need for MLOps grows. The role is well-established at large tech companies and growing fast at mid-stage startups that are hitting the 'our models work in notebooks but break in production' phase.
Skills Required
Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud infrastructure are baseline. Most roles want experience with ML-specific tooling: MLflow, Kubeflow, Weights & Biases, or similar. Strong DevOps fundamentals matter more than ML theory. You need to understand model serving (TorchServe, Triton, vLLM), monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana), and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi).
GPU infrastructure knowledge is increasingly valuable as LLM inference becomes a major cost center. Understanding GPU scheduling, multi-node training setups, and inference optimization (quantization, batching, caching) puts you in the top tier. Experience with model registries and feature stores rounds out the profile.
Good MLOps postings specify their ML stack, infrastructure scale, and the problems they're solving (deployment velocity, cost optimization, monitoring gaps). Red flag: companies that want MLOps but don't have any models in production yet. You'll end up doing general DevOps instead.
Compensation Benchmarks
MLOps Engineer roles pay a median of $220,000 based on 47 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $230,000. This role's midpoint ($262K) sits 19% above the category median. Disclosed range: $168K to $356K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
Target AI Hiring
Target has 5 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, MLOps Engineer. Based in Brooklyn Park, MN, US. Compensation range: $176K - $356K.
Remote Work Context
Remote AI roles pay a median of $185,334 across 717 positions. About 14% of all AI roles offer remote work.
Career Path
Common paths into MLOps Engineer roles include DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, Data Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Platform Lead, Infrastructure Architect, Engineering Manager.
DevOps engineers with ML curiosity have the shortest path. You already understand deployment, monitoring, and infrastructure. Add ML-specific knowledge (model serving, data pipelines, experiment tracking) and you're competitive. The career ceiling is high: ML Platform Lead roles at top companies pay well because the infrastructure complexity is enormous.
What to Expect in Interviews
Interviews emphasize infrastructure and reliability. Expect questions about CI/CD for ML models, monitoring for data drift, and how you'd design a model serving platform that handles 10K requests per second. Coding rounds focus on Python and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Helm). Be ready to discuss tradeoffs between different model serving frameworks and how you'd handle rollback when a new model degrades performance.
When evaluating opportunities: Good MLOps postings specify their ML stack, infrastructure scale, and the problems they're solving (deployment velocity, cost optimization, monitoring gaps). Red flag: companies that want MLOps but don't have any models in production yet. You'll end up doing general DevOps instead.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 roles).
MLOps demand tracks closely with production ML adoption. As more companies move models from notebooks to production, the need for MLOps grows. The role is well-established at large tech companies and growing fast at mid-stage startups that are hitting the 'our models work in notebooks but break in production' phase.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
Get Weekly AI Career Intelligence
Salary data, skills demand, and market signals from 16,000+ AI job postings. Every Monday.