director, Workforce Technology & Digital Experience

Now Brewing – dir, Workforce Management & Coffeehouse Systems! #tobeapartner

From the beginning, Starbucks set out to be a different kind of company—one that celebrates tradition while continuously evolving how we operate and serve. Today, that evolution is powered by technology platforms that enable scale, consistency, and exceptional partner experiences.

As the dir, Workforce Management & Coffeehouse Systems, you will play a critical role in advancing our enterprise technology strategy, leading the platforms that underpin retail labor, scheduling, and in-store partner tooling.

This role sits at the intersection of Partner Tech, Retail Operations, and Enterprise Data & Analytics, driving platform-based solutions that balance standardization, flexibility, and innovation at scale.

You will lead the strategy, engineering, and delivery for Workforce Management (WFM) and Digital Experience platforms, ensuring these systems operate as enterprise-grade, resilient, and extensible capabilities that unlock business outcomes—not just point solutions.

These products are at the heart of shift execution and should increasingly leverage AI and intelligent automation to improve productivity, accelerate decision-making, and enhance problem solving for partners and operators.

As a Retail Operations Tools Director, you will

Drive enterprise platform strategy and modernization

• Lead modernization efforts across core WFM platform to UKG and streamline overall ecosystem.
• Define and execute a multi-year platform strategy for Workforce Management and Retail Digital Experience aligned to enterprise architecture principles
• Transition from fragmented tools to scalable, product-centric platforms that enable reuse, integration, and speed to market

Deliver engineering excellence at scale

• Lead engineering teams to build and operate secure, highly available, API-driven platforms
• Establish standards for architecture, integration patterns, DevSecOps, and observability
• Drive improvements in system reliability, performance, and cost efficiency across mission-critical retail systems

Enable business outcomes through technology

• Translate retail and partner needs into scalable platform capabilities (labor optimization, scheduling, partner experience)
• Partner with Retail, HR, and Data teams to embed analytics-driven decisioning and AI-enabled insights into WFM and in-store tools to increase productivity and solve operational problems faster
• Ensure platforms are designed for adaptability across markets while maintaining enterprise consistency

Lead and develop high-performing teams

• Build and lead a diverse organization of engineering leaders, product-aligned teams, and platform specialists
• Create a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and talent development
• Coach leaders and teams to operate with a product mindset and enterprise ownership mentality

Influence across the enterprise

• Partner with senior leaders across Partner Tech, Retail Operations, HR, and Enterprise Data & Analytics
• Drive alignment on platform investment, prioritization, and trade-offs
• Shape vendor strategy and relationships to maximize value from strategic platforms and partners

Balance innovation with operational excellence

• Own end-to-end accountability for platform performance, availability, and delivery outcomes
• Ensure the right balance between run, optimize, and transform across critical retail systems
• Lead through complexity, making clear, data-driven decisions in a high-scale environment

We’d love to hear from people with

• 10+ years of progressive technology leadership experience, with deep exposure to enterprise platforms
• 5+ years of people leadership, including leading leaders and building high-performing engineering organizations

Workforce Management platform expertise

• Proven experience leading or implementing enterprise WFM solutions, including:
• UKG (Kronos), Blue Yonder (JDA), Or comparable large-scale labor, scheduling, or workforce optimization platforms
• Strong understanding of labor forecasting, scheduling optimization, compliance, and retail workforce processes

Engineering and platform leadership

• Deep experience in modern architecture patterns (cloud-native, APIs, microservices, event-driven design)
• Experience leading large-scale platform modernization or transformation initiatives
• Proven ability to operate and scale mission-critical, high-availability systems
• Experience identifying and applying AI, automation, and intelligent tooling to improve productivity, streamline operations, and accelerate problem resolution in enterprise environments

Enterprise leadership and influence

• Demonstrated ability to connect technology decisions to business outcomes
• Strong executive communication and cross-functional leadership skills
• Experience operating in complex, matrixed environments with senior stakeholders

People and culture leadership

• Track record of building, coaching, and developing leaders and teams
• Ability to foster a high-performing culture grounded in accountability and growth
• Strong focus on talent development, succession planning, and organizational health
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (advanced degree preferred)

Why this role matters

This role is pivotal in shaping Starbucks’ transition to enterprise platform-based retail operations. By modernizing Workforce Management and Digital Experience capabilities, you will directly impact partner experience, operational efficiency, and enterprise scalability—ensuring our technology foundation can support continued growth and innovation.

Preferred Qualification

• Experience with micro-services environment running at very high requests/sec (10K/sec)
• Experience with building and managing high volume distributed transactional systems
• Experience with building cloud native applications
• Experience with data lakes / data warehousing systems
• 10+ years’ experience building and leading teams of engineers.
• Enterprise services product management or ownership experience.
• Prior experience leading the design, execution, and continuous improvement of enterprise-wide, complex products and/or services.
• Deep subject matter expertise in Marketing platforms.
• 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.
• 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.

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.