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Principal Reliability Engineer Jobs in Minnesota

Principal Engineer CoCounsel is our most advanced AI offering to date - combining generative and ... Reliability and assurance: Establish SLOs, observability, and incident response practices for ...

Principal Engineer CoCounsel is our most advanced AI offering to date - combining generative and ... Reliability and assurance: Establish SLOs, observability, and incident response practices for ...

The AI Principal Engineer (IC Director) is responsible for leading the design, development, and ... Deep understanding of model lifecycle management, MLOps practices, and production reliability ...

Principal Engineer

Minneapolis, MN · On-site

$161 - $218/hr

As a Principal Engineer, you will help establish the engineering vision and act as the bridge ... reliability, business value, and measurable customer outcomes. Success in this role requires strong ...

Principal Software Engineer

Eagan, MN · Hybrid

$137K - $184K/yr

Your contributions will directly impact the performance and reliability of Noetica's core infrastructure. About the Role In this opportunity as Principal Engineer, you will: * Design and build ...

Showing results 21-40

Principal Reliability Engineer information

See Minnesota salary details

$72.5K

$144.2K

$208.1K

How much do principal reliability engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Sep 7, 2026, the average yearly pay for principal reliability engineer in Minnesota is $144,189.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $116,100.00 and $169,400.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is a Principal Reliability Engineer?

A Principal Reliability Engineer is a senior-level professional responsible for ensuring that systems, products, or processes are dependable and function reliably over time. They use their expertise to identify potential points of failure, implement preventive maintenance strategies, and analyze data to improve system performance. Principal Reliability Engineers often lead teams, develop reliability policies, and work closely with other engineering disciplines to enhance product quality and reduce downtime. Their work is critical in industries such as manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, and technology. They typically possess extensive experience in reliability engineering and advanced problem-solving skills.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a principal reliability engineer?

To thrive as a Principal Reliability Engineer, you need deep expertise in reliability engineering principles, statistical analysis, and a degree in engineering or a related field. Familiarity with reliability modeling software (such as ReliaSoft), FMEA/FMECA tools, root cause analysis methodologies, and relevant industry certifications like CRE (Certified Reliability Engineer) is typically required. Strong problem-solving, leadership, and communication skills help drive cross-functional initiatives and mentor junior engineers. These skills ensure the development and maintenance of high-quality, dependable systems, reducing downtime and increasing operational efficiency.

How does a principal reliability engineer typically contribute to cross-functional teams, and what collaboration challenges might arise?

As a Principal Reliability Engineer, you play a pivotal role in partnering with design, operations, and maintenance teams to ensure system reliability from concept through deployment. You’ll often lead failure analysis reviews, set reliability goals, and guide best practices across departments. Challenges can include aligning different teams’ priorities, communicating complex technical concepts to non-engineers, and driving consensus on design or process changes. Success in this role depends on strong communication skills and the ability to foster a collaborative, solutions-focused environment.

What is the difference between Principal Reliability Engineer vs Reliability Engineer?

AspectPrincipal Reliability EngineerReliability Engineer
CredentialsTypically requires a Bachelor's or Master's in Engineering, certifications like CRE or Six SigmaSimilar educational background, often with certifications in reliability or quality
Work EnvironmentLeads reliability strategies across projects, often in senior or lead rolesFocuses on analyzing data, testing, and improving product reliability
Industry UsageUsed in manufacturing, aerospace, energy, and tech industriesCommonly found in similar industries, supporting reliability initiatives
Search & ComparisonOften compared for seniority and scope of responsibilityCompared for technical expertise and hands-on reliability work

The Principal Reliability Engineer typically oversees reliability strategies and leads teams, while the Reliability Engineer focuses on technical analysis and implementation. Both roles require similar credentials and are vital in industries prioritizing product and system dependability.

What job categories do people searching Principal Reliability Engineer jobs in Minnesota look for?

The top searched job categories for Principal Reliability Engineer jobs in Minnesota are:

Infographic showing various Principal Reliability Engineer job openings in Minnesota as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 91% Full Time, 2% Part Time, and 7% Contract. Highlights an 85% Physical, 5% Hybrid, and 10% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $144,189 per year, or $69.3 per hour.

Principal Engineer - Cybersecurity Incident Response

Target

Minneapolis, MN

$168K - $303K/yr

Full-time

Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Retirement, PTO

Posted 13 days ago


Key responsibilities

  • Set and communicate the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for incident response engineering.

  • Architect and lead the development of secure, reliable services, integrations, and automations to support incident response activities.

  • Provide hands-on incident commander support during complex or high-severity cyber investigations.


Target rating

6.6

Company rating: 6.6 out of 10

Based on 7,054 frontline employees who took The Breakroom Quiz

14th of 39 rated national retailers


Job description

The pay range is $168,000.00 - $303,000.00

Pay is based on several factors which vary based on position.These include labor markets and in some instancesmay 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.

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.

As a Principal Engineer supporting Cybersecurity Incident Response, you set the technical strategy for the engineering platforms, services, integrations, and automations that enable Target to investigate and respond to cyber threats. You set direction for how these capabilities are designed, developed, tested, deployed, and operationalized across multiple portfolios and drive adoption across TTS. You lead and approve engineering efforts to meet functional and non-functional requirements, including security, reliability, scalability, availability, performance, and maintainability.

This role combines principal-level engineering leadership with deep incident response expertise. You are expected to contribute directly during active investigations with the judgment and hands-on capability of a principal incident response analyst, while translating investigative needs and lessons learned into durable technology and process improvements. You are a thought leader and mentor for engineers and incident responders and actively contribute to the broader cybersecurity and technical community.

Use your skills, experience and talents to be a part of groundbreaking thinking and visionary goals. As a Principal Engineer, Cybersecurity Incident Response, you will take the lead as you...

  • Set and communicate the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for incident response engineering, aligning security operations needs with Target's business and technical environments.
  • Architect and lead the development of secure, reliable services, integrations, and automations using Python, APIs, event-driven patterns, and cloud-native technologies to accelerate triage, enrichment, evidence collection, analysis, containment, and recovery.
  • Establish and drive engineering standards for source control, peer review, automated testing, CI/CD, release management, observability, documentation, secrets management, access controls, and resilient operations.
  • Lead the design, development, and lifecycle management of security operations (SecOps) and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) capabilities, including production-grade playbooks, integrations, case-management workflows, data enrichment, and analyst-facing tools.
  • Provide hands-on, principal analyst-level incident commander support by leading complex or high-severity cyber investigations. Guide triage, hypothesis development, data collection, scoping, evidence analysis, timeline reconstruction, containment decisions, eradication, recovery, and clear documentation of findings and risk.
  • Partner with incident responders, threat hunters, detection engineers, digital forensics, threat intelligence, Enterprise Architecture, and technology teams to convert investigative requirements and post-incident findings into scalable capabilities.
  • Assess the viability, applicability, security, maintainability, and cost implications of technical solutions through proofs of concept, prototypes, architecture reviews, vendor evaluations, and build-versus-buy decisions.
  • Define metrics and feedback loops that measure automation quality, platform reliability, investigative cycle time, analyst experience, and operational outcomes; use the results to drive continuous improvement.
  • Work with engineering and cybersecurity leaders to build a high-performing team, provide technical leadership and coaching, mentor engineers and analysts, and participate in the selection and development of technical talent.
  • Architect, engineer, and operationalize scalable live-response and forensic artifact collection solutions that enable secure, reliable acquisition of volatile and persistent evidence across endpoint, cloud, identity, network, and container environments, with built-in automation, evidence-integrity controls, observability, and integrations with investigative and SOAR workflows.
  • Design, develop, and operationalize agentic AI-powered analysis tooling that integrates with SecOps, SIEM, SOAR, and case-management platforms to correlate telemetry and forensic evidence, automate repetitive investigative tasks, generate defensible findings, and recommend next investigative actions with appropriate human oversight and security controls.

Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.

About you:

  • 4-year degree or equivalent experience. Continuing education to maintain thorough knowledge of technical and cybersecurity domains while staying current with relevant technologies and threats.
  • 10+ years of experience in technology development, cybersecurity engineering, security operations, or related services.
  • 10+ years of hands-on cybersecurity incident response experience, including demonstrated ability to independently lead and support active enterprise investigations.
  • Advanced Python programming and software engineering skills, including APIs, data structures, testing, code review, source control, packaging, error handling, and maintainable documentation.
  • Demonstrated experience designing and operating automation through modern CI/CD and DevSecOps practices, including automated testing, secure deployment, monitoring, rollback, and change governance.
  • Strong hands-on experience with SOAR platforms (SecOps preferred) and the development of production-grade playbooks, integrations, and workflows. Familiarity with adjacent technologies such as SIEM, EDR, case management, threat intelligence, identity, cloud security, and malware triage.
  • Deep knowledge of the incident response lifecycle and the ability to analyze endpoint, network, identity, cloud, and file based evidence; scope impact; build defensible timelines; and advise on containment, eradication, and recovery.
  • Strong understanding of secure systems design and operations, including authentication and authorization, secrets management, logging and telemetry, data handling, evidence integrity, resilience, and failure recovery.
  • Demonstrated success solving complex technical problems across more than one technical or functional area. Experience with REST APIs, SQL/NoSQL data stores, Git, PowerShell or Bash, containers/Kubernetes, and cloud technologies.
  • Understands business fundamentals and how technology can support business goals, translate business and cyber risk into technical strategy, and evaluate financial and operational implications.
  • Proven leadership capabilities, influence, interpersonal skills, sound judgment, and calm decision-making in time-sensitive situations. Excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills to communicate complex technical and investigative findings clearly to technical teams, cybersecurity leaders, and business stakeholders.
  • Strong team player with excellent planning and organizational skills and a demonstrated commitment to teamwork and team effectiveness.

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

Please paste this url into your preferred browser to learn about benefits eligibility for this role: https://tgt.biz/BenefitsForYou_F

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.


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About Target

Sourced by ZipRecruiter

We're here to help all families discover the joy of everyday life. Target is a general merchandise retailer with stores in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. 75% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Target store. We employ 400,000+ Our tagline is "Expect More. Pay Less." We've been using it since 1994! The Target Corporation also owns Shipt and Roundel. More to love! Target is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, its hometown since the first Target store opened in 1962 under The Dayton Company.

Industry

Retail and scientific research and development services

Company size

10,000+ Employees

Headquarters location

Minneapolis, MN, US