As a Lead Engineer on the Operational Technology (OT) Security team, you'll operate, integrate, automate, and scale OT security across Target's global supply chain and retail sites. You'll own the engineering and day-to-day operation of Target's OT security platform that covers asset inventory, secure configuration, vulnerability management, event visibility/detection, and many more security use cases. You’ll develop automation to distribute the right findings to the right operational teams so they can resolve security issues safely and in priority order. You'll work across various security and engineering teams so security controls land safely in environments where availability, safety, and keeping product moving matter.
You have a builder's mindset, a strong bias for action, and the technical depth to turn standard OT Security control requirements into engineering patterns that teams can implement and that operators want to use.
Expect to
Own the engineering, configuration, and day-to-day operation of the OT Security platform, including availability, performance, upgrades, licensing, access management, and continuous improvement.
Expand and maintain sensor and collector coverage and health across OT environments, working with site and network teams on configuration and site installation.
Build OT asset discovery, reconciliation, classification, and enrichment. Set minimum inventory-data expectations and work across teams to improve attribution, function, location, criticality, lifecycle, and support metadata.
Monitor and improve platform data quality. Find and fix coverage and inventory gaps so OT asset, vulnerability, traffic-flow, and secure-configuration data can be trusted by consumers.
Take in, normalize, correlate, and enrich findings and other OT exposure data, then prioritize risk based on operational consequence, asset criticality, exploitability, exposure, compensating controls, vendor support, maintenance windows, and remediation feasibility.
Own secure configuration for OT. Use secure configuration data and other evidence to find security-relevant deviations, develop hardening patterns, prioritize gaps, and validate remediation.
Develop shared engineering requirements, technical patterns, and acceptance criteria jointly with partner teams for network segmentation and vendor access patterns. Provide OT traffic-flow, asset, exposure, and operational-context data to support architecture and operations. Develop and implement methodologies for measuring adherence to the prescribed patterns.
Document and track exceptions and compensating controls for OT systems that can't be remediated through normal processes because of vendor lockout, safety constraints, or product-movement schedules. Report remaining risk through the right governance process.
Give OT-specific triage, remediation guidance, and closure validation to OT Infrastructure, site teams, system owners, and vendors.
Build and maintain OT Security platform integrations and automation (APIs, connectors, scripts) and work closely with the team's data-integration engineers to move OT data into enterprise dashboards, ticketing, and remediation workflows with clear ownership and SLAs.
Contribute to security engineering consultations on new or significantly changed OT solutions, including vendor and product evaluations, design reviews, hardening requirements, and vulnerability-management expectations.
Reduce toil for the team and for OT operations partners through automation, self-service, runbooks, and reusable engineering patterns.
Manage OT security vendor relationship day to day, including support cases, capability adoption, roadmap feedback, and input to evaluations and POCs.
Mentor other engineers and share your OT security knowledge across Target's cybersecurity and OT engineering community.
Core responsibilities are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.
About You
4-year degree OR equivalent work experience
6+ years of hands-on experience in security engineering, infrastructure, or platform engineering, including significant experience securing OT/ICS environments
Hands-on experience engineering and operating an OT asset visibility and exposure platform at enterprise scale, such as Claroty XDome, Nozomi, Dragos, Armis, Tenable OT, or similar. This includes sensor/collector deployment and health, coverage, data quality, and integrations
Strong understanding of OT/ICS fundamentals: the Purdue Model, IT/OT boundary patterns, PLCs, HMIs, SCADA, industrial switches, Windows/Linux OT servers, and vendor-managed subsystems
Working knowledge of industrial protocols (e.g., Modbus, DNP3, OPC-UA, EtherNet/IP, PROFINET), with a clear sense of when passive or active discovery is appropriate
Experience with OT asset inventory: discovery, reconciliation, classification, and enrichment, and working with authoritative inventory owners to close gaps
Experience with OT vulnerability and exposure management, including risk-based prioritization, exception tracking, compensating controls, and closure validation
Experience with secure-configuration baselines and hardening for OT servers, HMIs, and industrial endpoints
Hands-on familiarity with ISA/IEC 62443 and related frameworks (NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-82), and the ability to turn control requirements into practical engineering patterns and acceptance criteria
Scripting and automation skills in at least one language (e.g., Python), plus experience working with REST APIs and integrating security tools with enterprise systems
Experience running production platforms with change management, monitoring, and continuous-improvement practices in environments where availability and safety come first
Working knowledge of OT network segmentation, DMZs, jump hosts, and vendor remote access
Understanding of the current OT threat landscape, including IT-to-OT pivots, vendor remote access abuse, ransomware impact on OT-adjacent hosts, and ICS-specific malware, and how it should shape prioritization
Strong cross-functional partner who can build trust with operational teams, site teams, and vendors, and treats operator experience as a first-class concern
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical OT risk to both engineers and non-security leaders
Demonstrated curiosity, ownership, and a builder's mindset
Nice to have: experience with Kafka, BigQuery, PowerBI, Terraform, CI/CD, or GitHub Actions
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
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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.
