At Starbucks, our mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Starbucks Technologists work to achieve this mission through the use of cutting-edge technology delivered to our partners, customers, stores, roasters, and global communities.

The Director of Engineering for our Cloud Foundation Services (CFS), Site Reliability Engineering, and Core teams, within the Digital Platform Engineering organization, contributes to Starbucks success by creating solutions that are the backbone to our digital experiences. This position plays a key role in our current and future cloud strategies - with a focus on enabling distributed systems, at scale. This position will build and support solutions that support critical customer experience - including the Starbucks Rewards Platform, Commerce Engine and many of the APIs that server up our Mobile Order Experience. Big opportunity, big responsibility and the ability to move the needle for Starbucks Technology.

This position leads the strategy, planning, and implementation of technologies and security capabilities in support of the CFS and Core teams. This position is accountable for owning the strategic vision and direction of the platform and ensuring that it meets all business, technology, security, legal, and regulatory requirements. Directs the activities of an engineering team through the full product lifecycle of strategy, planning, development, delivery and maintenance of software products and services, including cloud-based or internet-related tools. Develops, modifies, and executes strategic changes and policies to improve and optimize the engineering function.

Responsibilities and essential job functions include but are not limited to the following:

Leadership - Setting goals for the work group, developing organizational capability, and modeling how we work together:

Establishes and maintains influential working relationships at all levels necessary to successfully promote technology strategies and innovation opportunities.
Leads teams to support strategic technology innovation, planning, and partnerships for the Company.
Works with the Senior Leadership Team to identify significant opportunities, map them to the Company’s strategic goals, achieve leadership alignment, and create plans against which to execute.
Defines and communicates the vision and roadmaps for Starbucks Technology and overall enterprise architecture to internal and external stakeholders.
Collaborates with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure tight alignment with Starbucks strategies and programs.

Planning and Execution - Developing strategic and operational plans for the work group, managing execution, and measuring results:

Leads and develops long-term technology strategy and business innovation opportunities consistent with the technology needs of the Company and the anticipated growth and expansion of all lines of business worldwide.
Ensures a strategic understanding of technology evolution to anticipate technology needs for future enterprise architecture initiatives.
Leads business area systems planning and opportunity assessments across Technology and business stakeholder groups.
Prepares, communicates and educates client groups and team(s) on changes in policies and practices within the organization.
Creates the decision process and oversees the governance of technology deployed globally to ensure it works within the enterprise architecture in manner consistent with enterprise principles and designs.

Business Requirements - Providing functional expertise and executing functional responsibilities:

Develops broad-based business plans to anticipate technology needs and solutions for multiple functions and cross-functional products, platforms, and/or services.
Facilitates governance and compliance of standards to ensure optimization of investment.
Identifies and assesses technology best practices for replication in all units and lines of business.
Investigates functional redundancy or gaps in systems in order to identify opportunities to improve efficiency or execution.
Leads research, analysis and reporting to support business development and merger and acquisition opportunities.
Leads the identification and negotiation of strategic technology partnerships and contributes to enterprise sourcing contracts to achieve broad business benefit and competitive advantage.
Leads the senior management team in identifying options and return on investment of technology investments.

Partner Development & Team Building - Providing partners with coaching, feedback, and developmental opportunities and building effective teams:

Challenges and inspires partners to achieve business results.
Conducts and ensures the completion of quarterly performance and development conversations.
Develops and manages effective teams to develop and deliver on technology opportunities.
Builds a leadership pipeline within the team, oversees of partners directly and indirectly managed and makes effective staffing decisions.
Provides coaching, direction, and leadership support to team members in order to achieve partner, business, and customer results.

Preferred Qualifications

5+ years experience building and leading teams of engineers.
Core understanding of distributed systems at scale.
Experience with cloud solutions at scale – ideal candidate has had experience with both AWS & Azure.
Hands on experience supporting customer facing applications and solutions.
Demonstrated experience directing the software development function, including the process, design, development, delivery and maintenance of software products and services.
Demonstrated experience developing and delivering solutions for retail, Internet or similar companies.
Hands on experience with Site Reliability Engineering concepts and leveraging observability tools to determine and drive to exceed SLOs.
Exceptional communication and presentation skills: you can communicate conceptual ideas, engineering rationale and technical challenges both verbally and visually, to a wide range of audiences.
Experience working with distributed teams.
Familiarity with Kubernetes, Cassandra, Kafka, and Hashicorp Vault.

As a Starbucks partner, you (and your family) will have access to medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, and other voluntary insurance benefits. Partners have access to short-term and long-term disability, paid parental leave, family expansion reimbursement, paid vacation from date of hire*, sick time (accrued at 1 hour for every 25 hours worked), eight paid holidays, and two personal days per year. Starbucks also offers eligible partners participation in a 401(k) retirement plan with employer match, a discounted company stock program (S.I.P.), Starbucks equity program (Bean Stock), incentivized emergency savings, and financial well-being tools. Additionally, Starbucks offers 100% upfront tuition coverage for a first-time bachelor’s degree through Arizona State University’s online program via the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, student loan management resources, and access to other educational opportunities. You will also have access to backup care and DACA reimbursement. Starbucks will comply with any applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, and in accordance with its plans and policies. This list is subject to change depending on collective bargaining in locations where partners have a certified bargaining representative. For additional information regarding partner perks and more detailed information about benefits, go to starbucksbenefits.com.

*If you are working in CA, CO, IL, LA, ME, MA, NE, ND or RI, you will accrue vacation up to a maximum of 120 hours (190 in CA) for roles below director and 200 hours (316 in CA) for roles at director or above. For roles in other states, you will be granted vacation time starting at 120 hours annually for roles below director and 200 hours annually for roles director and above.

The actual base pay offered to the successful candidate will be based on multiple factors, including but not limited to job-related knowledge/skills, experience, geographical location, and internal equity. At Starbucks, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at the high end of the range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent upon the facts and circumstances of each position and candidate.

If you live in the greater Seattle area, we offer a flexible workplace that allows for hybrid work. Partners can work remotely up to one day per week.

Join us and inspire with every cup. Apply today!

Starbucks Coffee Company is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.Qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with all federal, state and local ordinances.Starbucks Coffee Company is committed to offering reasonable accommodations to job applicants with disabilities. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please contact us at applicantaccommodation@starbucks.com or 1(888) 611-2258.

Learn more about this Employer on their Career Site

director engineering, Cloud Foundational Services -ST (Seattle, WA)