Starbucks · 8 hours ago
engineer principal (Platform Engineering) - ST; Seattle, WA
Seattle, WA
Full-time
Hybrid
Lead/Staff
$171K/yr - $284K/yr
8+ years expStarbucks is a company dedicated to nurturing human connection through technology. The Principal Engineer in Platform Engineering will lead a team of platform engineers and be responsible for delivering high-quality technologies and security capabilities that support the Starbucks Engineering Platform.
CoffeeFood and BeverageRestaurantsTea
Responsibilities
Own and communicates highly complex ideas and concepts to non-technical peers and customers
Builds and maintains effective cross-functional, collaborative relationships with business and technology partners
Supports the development team and perform activities to resolve developer issues in a timely and accurate fashion
Owns design and support of engineering build and release processes
Builds and maintains effective relationships with technology vendors to deliver against business objectives
Conducts research and makes recommendations on standards, products, and services
Owns ensuring application and infrastructure architectural solutions are stable, secure, and compliant with Company standards and practices
Owns design and support of all technologies in accordance with Information Security's guiding principles for highly sensitive data
Owns design and support of high-availability operational support and automate solutions across the environment
Owns design and support of deep telemetry capabilities to provide ongoing success and performance metrics
Owns design and support of service monitoring across all platforms to ensure continuous availability and operational continuity of critical systems
Upholds company policies, and legal/regulatory requirements, such as PCI
Owns design and support of system configurations and baselines to support secure application development software control best practices and standards
Qualification
Required
8-10 years of professional industry experience with software development, platform engineering and operations
5 years of leadership role in systems or application development projects of all sizes and complexities, including large systems
3-5 years of leading or managing small technical teams
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field
Ability to lead a group of technical experts that cohesively build and operate secure, durable, flexible, accessible solutions. Requires an understanding of relevant development languages, tools, frameworks, utilities and technical dependencies
Recognizes, values and champions high quality, reusable software with minimal defects on the team
Working experience with product development teams in a platform engineering role
Working knowledge of application architecture, infrastructure and security concepts and technical implementation
Aptitude to pick up new technologies and trends, as they become relevant for the business and our platforms. Examples include GraphQL, Big Data, REST Services, and incorporating cloud components
Expert in understanding of implications from design and implementation architecture choices toward building secure, scalable, durable, flexible, accessible solutions
Strong knowledge of AWS or Azure and Cloud Computing concepts
Strong hands-on coding and code review
Strong knowledge in best practices for: System Architecture and design
Data storage types (RDBMS, NoSQL, KV, Document, etc)
Platform and infrastructure
Application. PaaS services
Monitoring, auditing, and operations
In-depth working experience in a platform engineering culture; one or more Orchestration/Configuration Management and Continuous Integration technology
Linux Containers
Networking protocols such as HTTP, DNS and TCP/IP
Experience managing full application stacks from the OS up through custom applications
Expert in analyzing and troubleshooting applications
Broad and deep understanding of relevant platform and applications capabilities, including established API's, system activity components, process flows, the underlying data model, implementation specifics of important business rules, batch jobs, user interface components, and application configuration
Familiarity and curiosity in the business context and trends, as well as the business customers' opportunities. Awareness of the functional aspects of the solution
Product platform life cycle - Strategy, development and deployment
Help define overall platform evolvement strategies and procedures
Help define operational processes to ensure predictable software development outcomes; refine Information Security processes and procedures
Develop, recommend, evaluate, integrate, deploy, and maintain security tools including security framework
Evaluate software security products and technologies
Develop and deploy solutions in Agile methodology, with continuous delivery processes
Ability to lead and influence cross functional teams that include architects, analysts, developers and QA analysts
Ability to articulate ideas, using facts and data, for solutions to both technical and business communities
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Ability to influence and negotiate strategy and roadmaps in planning exercises
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
Ability to balance multiple priorities and meet deadlines
Ability to make timely and effective decisions using a mixture of intuition, analysis, experience and judgment
Preferred
Golang preferred
Docker/Kubernetes, AWS Codebuild/Codepipeline, Terraform & Datadog preferred
Git preferred
Benefits
Medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance
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
Two personal days per year
Participation in a 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Discounted company stock program (S.I.P.)
Starbucks equity program (Bean Stock)
Incentivized emergency savings
Financial well-being tools
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
Access to other educational opportunities
Backup care
DACA reimbursement
Company
Starbucks
Starbucks is a restaurant chain that serves handcrafted ready-to-drink beverages, including coffee, tea, juices, and snack food items.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Starbucks has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (208)
2024 (127)
2023 (130)
2022 (172)
2021 (146)
2020 (149)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$2.65BKey Investors
Elliott Management Corp.Pershing Square Capital Management
2025-05-06Post Ipo Debt· $1.75B
2024-07-19Post Ipo Equity
2018-10-10Post Ipo Equity· $900M
Leadership Team
Brian R. Niccol
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Cathy R. Smith
CFO
Recent News
2026-01-11
Company data provided by crunchbase