engineer lead, Cloud Foundation Services Platform (Network)- ST; Seattle, WA

Starbucks Coffee Company•Seattle, WA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

At Starbucks, our mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Starbucks Technologists work to achieve this mission through the use of cutting-edge technology delivered to our partners, customers, stores, roasters, and global communities. This job contributes to Starbucks success by delivering high-quality, reliable, and stable technologies and security capabilities in support of the Starbucks Engineering Platform. This position is accountable for the installation, configuration, monitoring, analysis, maintenance, and technical support of the platform. We are seeking a Cloud Engineer – Lead with deep expertise in cloud networking and the Azure ecosystem, including advanced routing concepts within Kubernetes (AKS) environments. This role will act as a technical leader and hands-on engineer, responsible for designing, building, securing, and operating highly available, scalable, and compliant cloud platforms across Azure and AWS. The ideal candidate is a network-first cloud engineer who can bridge traditional enterprise networking concepts with cloud-native and Kubernetes-based architectures, while driving automation, CI/CD, and DevOps best practices.

Requirements

Deep, hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure (mandatory)
Strong experience with Amazon Web Services (AWS) (good to have)
Expert-level understanding of networking concepts, including: Load balancers, firewalls, VPC/VNETs, VPNs, DNS OSI model and TCP/IP networking fundamentals
Strong experience with Kubernetes, including: Networking and routing within Kubernetes clusters Ingress controllers, service networking, and traffic management
Experience with cloud-native networking and security controls
Strong hands-on experience with: Terraform for infrastructure automation Terraform and Python for scripting and automation
Experience with build tools, CI/CD pipelines, DevOps tools like Azure DevOps, and Agile principles
Familiarity with GitOps practices and workflows
Experience implementing logging, monitoring, and alerting for infrastructure and applications
Proven experience operating and supporting 24x7 production environments
Experience designing and managing high-capacity, redundant, and mission-critical systems

Nice To Haves

Exposure to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and/or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a plus
8+ years of experience in system administration, network administration, or systems engineering
Experience with one or more programming languages such as Python, Go etc.
Experience with infrastructure as code toolsets like Terraform, Azure Bicep/ ARM/ AWS cloud formation, Crossplane
Experience supporting large-scale distributed systems and client-server architectures
Strong debugging and performance optimization skills
Knowledge of databases and comfort working with multiple database technologies
Understanding of legal and regulatory requirements such as SOX, PCI, SWIFT, and data protection standards
Proven ability to translate technical insights into actionable business recommendations

Responsibilities

Communicate highly complex technical ideas and architectural decisions clearly to non-technical partners, stakeholders, and customers
Establish strong cross-functional relationships with engineering, security, platform, and business teams
Act as a senior technical mentor and escalation point for cloud, network, and Kubernetes-related issues
Partner effectively with technology vendors to deliver solutions aligned with business objectives
Design, implement, and operate secure, scalable, and resilient cloud networking architectures in Microsoft Azure and AWS
Own networking design across Kubernetes (AKS) environments, including: Pod-to-pod and service routing Load balancing, ingress/egress, and service meshes Network policies and traffic controls
Engineer and maintain build, release, and deployment pipelines
Provide high-availability operational support and automate remediation across environments
Implement all technologies in accordance with Information Security guiding principles for highly sensitive data
Ensure application and infrastructure architectures are stable, secure, and compliant with company standards and regulatory requirements (e.g., PCI)
Support federated security and identity models, including: SAML, Single Sign-On (SSO), IAM, and identity federation
Maintain system configurations and baselines that support secure development and operational best practices
Implement deep telemetry, logging, and monitoring solutions to support performance visibility and operational excellence
Deploy and maintain infrastructure and application monitoring solutions (e.g., New Relic, Splunk, or similar)
Implement service monitoring across platforms to ensure continuous availability and operational continuity of mission-critical systems
Design and build infrastructure-as-code and automation workflows using Terraform, Python, and PowerShell
Enable and evolve CI/CD and GitOps workflows using Azure DevOps, Git-based workflows, and modern DevOps tooling
Support development teams by resolving platform-related build, deployment, and runtime issues in a timely and accurate manner

Benefits

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.