Staff Engineer

As a Staff Engineer on the Core Services team at Shipt, you will act as a pivotal technical leader and architect, defining the future of the high-scale systems that power our entire retailer management ecosystem. You will collaborate with Principal Engineers to ensure our architecture solves today's complex problems and is prepared for the massive scale of the next three years. You will be a technical multiplier who sets the architectural standard for your domain, elevating the Core Services codebase through rigorous design standards, mentoring, and influencing technical direction across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and technical quality for all applications developed by your team, leading the design and evolution of highly available microservices using technologies like Golang, Postgres, Redis, and Kafka.
• Drive strategic initiatives to optimize the stability, scalability, and performance of mission-critical systems, ensuring they remain the robust backbone for Shipt's retail partners.
• Work across and influence Product, Platform, and other engineering teams to align on technical direction, prioritization, and solution design, translating complex business requirements into maintainable technical specifications.
• Establish domain-wide standards for operational excellence, including observability, proactive monitoring, and sustainable on-call rotations.
• Set the highest bar for engineering fundamentals, including test coverage (Unit, Integration, E2E) and code quality through deep-dive design reviews.
• Evaluate and evolve engineering processes (CI/CD, RFCs, Post-mortems) to eliminate inefficiencies and improve team velocity without sacrificing quality.
• Architect services with a "Security-first" mindset, scrutinizing third-party libraries and ensuring data protection standards are integrated into the initial design.
• Create and advocate for high-quality technical documentation, including architecture diagrams and workflow schemas, to ensure system maintainability.

Requirements

• 7+ years of software development experience building and maintaining complex, highly distributed systems in cloud environments at significant scale.
• Deep expertise in Golang (or similar systems languages) and a sophisticated understanding of relational databases, advanced caching strategies, and message brokers (Kafka).
• Proven ability to diagnose, resolve, and prevent complex bottlenecks in distributed architectures, high-volume services, and database query performance.
• Dedicated mentorship skills to grow the careers of Senior Engineers, Engineers, and Associate Engineers, teaching them to avoid architectural and coding pitfalls.
• Ability to thrive in environments with high degrees of freedom, taking full architectural ownership and driving the "Definition of Done" for services from concept to operation.
• Pragmatic approach to balancing architectural purity with business delivery, knowing when to build for the long-term and when to iterate quickly.
• Data-driven approach to engineering, using metrics to improve test runtimes, code performance, and define meaningful SLIs/SLOs.

Skills

• Agile Methodology
• Apache Kafka
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Go Programming Language
• Kubernetes

Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience | Required

Schedule

Hybrid team members have the following in-office expectations:

• Birmingham, AL: In-office at least 2 days per week, with core in-office days on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
• Minneapolis, MN: In-office at least 1 day per week on either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
• San Francisco, CA: In-office at least 1 day per week between Monday and Thursday.
• Certain roles may require full-time in-office presence.

Pay

Pay Range: $95,800 - $180,000. Individual total compensation will vary based on factors such as qualifications, skill level, competencies, and work location.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and eligible family members.
• 401k plan enrollment.
• Discretionary vacation for exempt team members, paid holidays, and paid sick leave.
• Eligibility for an annual bonus and potential restricted stock units based on role.

About the Company

Shipt is a retail tech company connecting people to reliable, high-quality delivery with a personal touch. We aim to put our team first to boost a sense of belonging, spark opportunities for growth, provide unique benefits, and commit to giving back to our communities. Shipt is an independently operated, wholly owned subsidiary of Target Corporation, available in more than 5,000 U.S. cities, and headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama.