Team Overview Target Search is offering an exciting opportunity to solve state-of-the-art problems in e-commerce search. Target’s Search Technology team is rapidly growing and creating massive business impact by building cutting-edge search systems. We use NLP, deep learning, classical machine learning and LLMs to build best-in-class systems. As we build the future of e-commerce search, we are looking for driven and passionate individuals with deep expertise in developing ML systems at scale and leading high-impact charters. If you are that person, you can expect to be involved in: Leading the design, development, and productionization of ML systems across query understanding, content understanding, retrieval, ranking/relevance, and ads/recommendations Owning technical direction for a problem area: defining strategy, influencing roadmaps, setting quality bars, and driving execution through a team of scientists and engineers Architecting end-to-end solutions that integrate modeling, experimentation (offline + online), and engineering systems for scalability, latency, and reliability Developing a multi-year vision for key search/relevance capabilities on Target.com( opens in new window), aligned to business outcomes and measurable metrics Serving as a technical leader and mentor, raising the bar for scientific rigor, design reviews, and best practices across the org Preferred Domain Experience We’re looking for strong domain depth and evidence of impact in one or more of the following: Search / Retrieval / Ranking / Relevance (e-commerce or large-scale consumer products preferred) Recommendations (personalization, candidate generation, ranking, multi-objective optimization) Ads / Sponsored Search (auction systems, relevance, pacing/bidding, ads ranking, CTR/CVR modelling) About You 4-year degree in a quantitative discipline (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) or equivalent practical experience 7+ years of professional data science / applied ML experience (or equivalent), with a strong track record of delivering production ML systems and measurable business impact Deep expertise in modern ML techniques including deep learning, NLP, representation learning, and LLM-based approaches, with strong judgment on when to use simpler methods Demonstrated ability to lead large, ambiguous problem spaces: framing, solutioning, driving alignment, and delivering through cross-functional partners Strong hands-on programming skills in Python, SQL, and Spark, plus comfort working closely with engineering stacks for online inference, data pipelines, and model lifecycle tooling Experience with LLM adaptation (e.g., fine-tuning, instruction tuning, preference optimization) and/or agentic workflows (tool use, RAG, evaluation harnesses, orchestration, safety/quality guardrails) applied to Search/Rec/Ads use-cases Strong analytical thinking and applied research skills: ability to build evaluation frameworks, perform error analysis, and iterate based on data and user outcomes Excellent communication skills: able to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders, write clear RFCs/design docs, and drive decisions in reviews Self-driven, results-oriented, and able to operate as a multiplier across teams Nice to Have Publications or accepted papers/posters in industry tracks at top-tier conferences (e.g., SIGIR, KDD, WWW, NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, EMNLP, RecSys), or equivalent demonstrated external technical contributions (open-source, patents, invited talks) Experience operating ML systems at scale: latency/throughput constraints, model monitoring, drift detection, experimentation platforms, and production incident learnings Experience in multi-objective optimization (e.g., relevance + revenue + fairness + constraints) and online experimentation at high traffic

About Target

Target is one of the world’s most recognized brands and one of America’s leading retailers. We make Target our guests’ preferred shopping destination by offering outstanding value, inspiration, innovation and an exceptional guest experience that no other retailer can deliver. Target is committed to responsible corporate citizenship, ethical business practices, environmental stewardship and generous community support. Since 1946, we have given 5 percent of our profits back to our communities. Our goal is to work as one team to fulfill our unique brand promise to our guests, wherever and whenever they choose to shop.