Starbucks · 1 day ago
technical lead, data engineering and digital fraud prevention
Seattle, WA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level
$150K/yr - $249K/yr
7+ years expStarbucks is a company that celebrates coffee and connection, and they are seeking a Technical Lead for their Data Engineering and Digital Fraud Prevention teams. This role involves providing technical leadership, driving delivery across platforms, and mentoring engineers while ensuring the alignment of technical strategy and execution.
CoffeeFood and BeverageRestaurantsTea
Responsibilities
Provide technical leadership across two platform domains: real-time distributed APIs and data engineering platforms
Contribute hands-on where it matters most, focusing on critical paths, prototypes, and high-leverage areas
Lead architecture, design, and delivery of scalable, reliable systems that serve critical internal and external consumers
Partner with engineering managers and product leaders to prioritize work, shape technical strategy, and align execution across teams
Lead complex initiatives that span multiple systems, services, and data pipelines
Establish and reinforce engineering best practices around reliability, scalability, observability, and operational excellence
Act as a key contributor to the team’s 1-2 year technical roadmap, helping define priorities, sequencing and strategic bets
Guide the practical application of LLM-powered and agentic workflows within platform capabilities, focusing on real business and developer impact
Act as a multiplier for the teams by mentoring engineers, unblocking delivery, and raising the technical bar
Facilitate core agile ceremonies including sprint planning, grooming, and daily stand-ups
Track and report team progress toward goals; escalate risks or blockers as needed
Partner with engineering leadership to surface delivery updates and team dynamics
Proactively identify and clear blockers via internal or cross-functional collaboration
Coordinate with peer teams to manage dependencies and align on shared outcomes
Monitor and help complete operational items like security patching and compliance work
Ensure alignment between team goals and backlog prioritization
Support a culture of continuous improvement through process iteration and refinement
Maintain visibility into team bandwidth and inform realistic capacity planning
Qualification
Required
7+ years of software engineering experience, including building and operating production systems at scale
3+ years in data engineering, MLOps, or adjacent platform roles, delivering data/ML workflows to production
Strong proficiency in Python and SQL (pipelines, complex transformations, performance tuning on large datasets)
Hands-on expertise with Databricks and Apache Spark and modern lake/lakehouse architectures
Experience designing and running resilient, highly available distributed systems
Production experience with Docker and Kubernetes
Practical experience implementing CI/CD for data platform workflows
Familiarity with cloud operational best practices in AWS and/or Azure, including security-minded operations
Experience with observability (monitoring/metrics and centralized logging; e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana)
Proven Tech Lead delivery skills: lead and mentor engineers, drive agile execution, manage cross-team dependencies, remove blockers, and deliver across stakeholders
Strong communication and collaboration skills across engineering, product, and partner teams
Proactive, detail-oriented, and execution-focused in fast-paced environment
Experience applying LLMs and agentic workflows to derive insights from data products (e.g., LLM-powered analytics, RAG over internal datasets/metadata, tool-using agents for investigation, and implementing evaluation/guardrails for reliability)
Experience in regulated/compliance environments (e.g., PCI, SOX) and/or operating 24x7 cloud production systems
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
Time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act
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
Morningstar.com
2026-01-23
2026-01-23
Company data provided by crunchbase