Lead Engineeer - Threat Hunting & Countermeasures

The pay range is $132,000.00 - $238,000.00

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.

About Us

Target is an iconic brand, a Fortune 50 company, and one of America’s leading retailers.

Target as a tech company? Absolutely. We’re the behind-the-scenes powerhouse that fuels Target’s passion and commitment to cutting-edge innovation. We anchor every facet of one of the world’s best-loved retailers with a strong technology framework that relies on the latest tools and technologies—and the brightest people—to deliver incredible value to guests online and in stores. Target Technology Services is on a mission to offer the systems, tools and support that guests and team members need and deserve. We drive industry-leading technologies in support of every angle of the business, and help ensure that Target operates smoothly, securely and reliably from the inside out. Our high-performing teams balance independence with collaboration, and we pride ourselves on being versatile, agile and creative. Use your skills, experience, and talents as a member of a world-class cyber security team!

About the Role

As a Lead Engineer – Threat Hunting and Countermeasures, you will help advance Target’s ability to detect and understand sophisticated threats by combining threat hunting expertise with strong data and analytical capabilities. This role is centered on proactive, hypothesis-driven hunting, but it is equally grounded in the ability to work at scale across large, complex datasets to identify meaningful patterns, anomalies, and indicators of adversary behavior. You will apply statistical methods, security analytics, and machine learning techniques to transform hunting concepts into scalable, repeatable detection strategies. Working across security, detection engineering, and intelligence functions, you will investigate emerging threats, develop countermeasures, improve visibility, and strengthen Target’s overall defensive posture. This role is ideal for someone who is deeply technical, analytically driven, and excited to blend hands-on hunting with modern data science approaches in cyber defense.

Core Responsibilities

• Process and analyze large-scale security datasets using platforms such as BigQuery or similar data environments to identify behavioral patterns, establish baselines, and surface anomalous activity.
• Conduct structured, hypothesis-driven threat hunts informed by threat intelligence, adversary tradecraft, and behavioral analytics.
• Apply statistical analysis, anomaly detection, and machine learning techniques to improve threat detection, investigation, and prioritization workflows.
• Design, develop, operationalize, and tune production-ready detections, including data-driven and machine learning-based approaches, to identify novel or evasive threats.
• Build and enhance scalable analytics and detection pipelines in partnership with detection engineering, data engineering, and platform teams.
• Investigate emerging threats, adversary techniques, and security incidents to refine hunt methodologies and detection strategies.
• Collaborate with incident response, detection engineering, cyber threat intelligence, and other security partners to validate findings and improve security coverage.
• Partner with red and blue teams to test detections, strengthen countermeasures, and expand visibility across the enterprise.
• Contribute to threat modeling and adversary research to continuously improve threat hunting practices and defensive capabilities.

Required Skills

• 4-year degree in cybersecurity, computer science, data science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 2+ years of experience developing detections informed by threat intell