Lead Software Engineer - Digital Partner Experience, Application Development

Now Brewing: Lead Software Engineer! #tobeapartner

From the beginning, Starbucks set out to be a different kind of company. One that not only celebrated coffee and the rich tradition, but that also brought a feeling of connection. We are known for developing extraordinary leaders who share this passion and are guided by their service to others.

You'll be the technical lead for the backend and infrastructure behind a partner-facing application that helps store partners plan and get through their daily work. You'll own the architecture, delivery, deployment, and production health of the services and cloud infrastructure that power it, and set the team's technical direction. You'll work with product,QA, and platform teams to ship reliable features that matter, including large, high-priority projects.

As a Lead Software Engineer, you will...

• Act as the technical lead for the backend and infrastructure. You'll own architecture, delivery, deployment, monitoring, and production support for the Node.js/TypeScript services and the GraphQL/REST APIs they expose.
• Set backend standards, patterns, and technical direction, including service boundaries, API design, data modeling, and schema composition across a federated GraphQL layer.
• Own the infrastructure-as-code behind the services you lead — provisioning app hosting, serverless functions, databases, caching, messaging, and secret stores via Terraform or an equivalent IaC tool.
• Lead technical design reviews, code reviews, and architecture discussions, and make sound engineering decisions.
• Break large projects into technical work the team can deliver, and coordinate dependencies with frontend, product, and platform teams.
• Design and operate the integration layer connecting your services to downstream REST APIs, GraphQL services, and third-party systems.
• Own CI/CD pipelines, release management, and environment health in the cloud, including certificate and secret rotation, blue/green deployments, and feature-flag rollout strategy.
• Work with QA to define and drive unit, integration, end-to-end, and contract testing for backend services.
• Lead troubleshooting and root-cause analysis across the API, authentication, data, and integration layers. Improve monitoring, alerting, and production health.
• Make sure services implement secure authentication and authorization patterns (OAuth2/OIDC, JWTs, service-to-service auth) and meet reliability and performance targets.
• Mentor and coach engineers and raise the technical bar across the team.
• Document architecture, support models, operational procedures, and technical decisions. Lead knowledge transfer when ownership changes hands.

We'd love to hear from people with...

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including leading backend or infrastructure delivery.
• Strong backend development skills in Node.js and TypeScript (or equivalent, e.g. Java/Spring Boot, .NET).
• Strong grasp of service architecture, API design, data modeling, and distributed systems patterns.
• Experience designing and maintaining services that sit behind a federated GraphQL layer or API gateway.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or equivalent) in production cloud environments.
• Experience setting backend standards, patterns, and technical direction across multiple services or teams.
• Experience integrating backend services with REST APIs, GraphQL services, and third-party/enterprise systems.
• Experience owning services end to end: architecture, delivery, deployment, monitoring, and production support.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, release management, and cloud-hosted services.
• Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis skills across API, authentication, data, and integration layers.
• Solid understanding of OAuth2/OIDC, JWTs, and service-to-service authentication and secret management.
• Experience defining unit, integration, end-to-end, and contract testing approaches for backend systems.
• Strong mentoring and technical coaching skills.
• Works well with product managers, architects, QA, frontend engineers, and business partners.
• Able to document architecture, support models, operational procedures, and technical decisions.

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.

We believe we do our best work when we're together, which is why we're onsite four days a week in Nashville, TN.

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 [email protected] or 1(888) 611-2258.