director, AI Transformation

Starbucks Coffee Company•Seattle, WA

9h•$187,400 - $319,000•Onsite

About The Position

The Director of Product Management, Enterprise AI Acceleration will lead work to scale AI capabilities across Starbucks as part of its newly formed Enterprise AI Acceleration Office. The role identifies high-value processes, works with domain subject matter experts to decompose them into human and agent workflows, and moves initiatives from concept to specification-ready solutions. The leader partners with teams across retail, supply chain, digital, operations, and support functions to develop AI-powered workflows that can be executed reliably, safely, and at scale. The position contributes to Starbucks’ enterprise AI roadmap and works across engineering, data science, operations, legal, and compliance. It requires guiding engineering teams on requirements, edge cases, evaluation criteria, and agent behavior, as well as supporting business adoption and measuring and improving agent performance. The role is based in Seattle and requires regular in-office collaboration. Starbucks states that employees are onsite four days a week.

Requirements

At least 8 years of product management experience, including at least 3 years focused on AI/ML, intelligent automation, or agent-based systems.
Experience leading or closely partnering with engineering teams and translating business needs into technical requirements.
Strong capability in mapping, analyzing, and redesigning complex enterprise workflows.
Understanding of when humans should remain in the loop and how agents should behave in production environments.
Passion for AI’s potential and ability to inspire teams across the organization.
Experience in large, matrixed organizations and ability to influence without authority.
Based in Seattle, with regular in-office collaboration required.

Nice To Haves

Experience with agentic architectures, workflow orchestration, or LLM-powered automation.
Familiarity with retail, supply chain, or store operations.
Ability to create clear, unambiguous specifications for engineering teams.
Strong understanding of AI safety, governance, and evaluation frameworks.
Demonstrated success launching AI-powered products in production environments.

Responsibilities

Partner with subject matter experts to map current processes, identify automation opportunities, and decompose workflows into human-in-the-loop and agent-driven components.
Own initiatives from discovery through requirements, prototyping, validation, and handoff to engineering for specification-based development.
Contribute to the enterprise AI roadmap and prioritize use cases based on impact, feasibility, and alignment with enterprise goals.
Collaborate with engineering, data science, operations, legal, and compliance to ensure solutions are scalable, safe, and ethically aligned.
Guide engineering teams on requirements, edge cases, evaluation criteria, and expected agent behavior.
Support adoption by partnering with business leaders to prepare teams for AI-enabled workflows.
Define KPIs, evaluate agent performance, and iterate based on real-world usage.

Benefits

Medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, and other voluntary insurance benefits.
Short-term and long-term disability.
Paid parental leave and family expansion reimbursement.
Paid vacation from date of hire, sick time, eight paid holidays, and two personal days per year.
Eligible participation in a 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
Discounted company stock program (S.I.P.) and Starbucks equity program (Bean Stock).
Incentivized emergency savings and 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 and access to other educational opportunities.
Backup care and DACA reimbursement.