director, data science- Coffeehouse Analytics (Nashville, TN)
About The Position
This strategic leadership role is pivotal in shaping how data science drives store development, staffing, deployment, experimentation, and market decisions across our coffeehouse network. You will lead multiple high-impact data science teams focused on building decision-support systems, optimization models, and experimentation frameworks that improve partner experience, operational efficiency, and business outcomes at scale. As a director of data science, you will bring a strong product and people leadership mindset, balancing deep technical understanding with the ability to translate complex analytics into practical, actionable solutions. You will be a visible advocate for data science as a core capability for operational excellence and continuous improvement. This is a unique opportunity to lead a talented organization, influence enterprise decisions, and materially impact how Starbucks plans, operates, and learns.
Requirements
- Proven experience leading data science or advanced analytics teams, ideally supporting retail operations, store development, or labor.
- Strong background in applied analytics, including forecasting, optimization, experimentation, and decision-support systems.
- Experience building and scaling analytical products that are used in day-to-day business decision-making.
- In-depth experience with Python and reviewing production-quality analytical code.
- Ability to translate complex quantitative work into clear, actionable insights for executive and operational audiences.
- Strong cross-functional partnership and influencing skills, with a track record of driving outcomes through collaboration.
- Experience mentoring and developing data scientists and people leaders.
- Comfort operating in ambiguity and helping teams move from problem framing to scalable solutions.
- Experience driving the evolution from descriptive reporting to predictive and prescriptive decision support, including demand forecasting, capacity diagnostics, and optimization under real‑world constraints.
- Comfort balancing statistical rigor, AI innovation, and practical business constraints.
Responsibilities
- Lead End-to-End Decision Science for Operations: Own data science strategy across staffing, scheduling, routing and deployment, market planning analytics, and coffeehouse testing—ensuring models and insights directly inform real-world decisions.
- Build and Scale High-Impact Teams: Lead, mentor, and grow multiple teams of data scientists and managers, fostering strong technical rigor, product thinking, and business partnership.
- Operational Planning & Optimization Leadership: Guide the development of predictive, optimization, and diagnostic models that support labor planning, capacity management, deployment tradeoffs, and network performance.
- Experimentation & Measurement Excellence: Oversee experimentation design, causal inference, and an internal test-and-learn framework that enables rapid, trustworthy learning across coffeehouses and markets.
- Translate Analytics into Action: Partner closely with operations, finance, engineering, and field leaders to turn complex analytics into clear recommendations, tools, and decision frameworks.
- Influence Through Storytelling: Communicate insights, tradeoffs, and model outputs in compelling ways to senior leaders, helping shape strategy, prioritization, and investment decisions.
- Champion Adoption and Trust: Drive adoption of analytics products by ensuring they are usable, explainable, and embedded in operational workflows.
- Build Durable Data Science Products: Apply systems thinking to design scalable, reusable analytical products that move beyond one-off analyses and support long-term capability building.
- Strengthen Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with data engineering, tools, and platform teams to ensure analytics solutions are production-ready, reliable, and extensible.
Benefits
- medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, and other voluntary insurance benefits.
- 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
- eligible partners 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
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
Education Level
No Education Listed
