engineer principal (Platform Engineering) - ST; Seattle, WA

Starbucks Coffee Company•Seattle, WA

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

At Starbucks, our mission is with every cup, with every conversation, with every community - we nurture the limitless possibilities of human connection. 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. In this position you are responsible for leading a team of platform engineers through planning, delivery, and operations of solutions. You are also responsible for the evolvement, delivery and support of the technology strategy and roadmaps for new and existing features and capabilities of the product. This role requires technical leadership experience, technical expertise, domain proficiency, platform breadth, and depth. Models and acts in accordance with Starbucks guiding principles.

Requirements

8-10 years of professional industry experience with software development, platform engineering and operations
5 years of leadership role in systems or application development projects of all sizes and complexities, including large systems
3-5 years of leading or managing small technical teams
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field
Ability to lead a group of technical experts that cohesively build and operate secure, durable, flexible, accessible solutions. Requires an understanding of relevant development languages, tools, frameworks, utilities and technical dependencies.
Recognizes, values and champions high quality, reusable software with minimal defects on the team.
Working experience with product development teams in a platform engineering role
Working knowledge of application architecture, infrastructure and security concepts and technical implementation.
Aptitude to pick up new technologies and trends, as they become relevant for the business and our platforms. Examples include GraphQL, Big Data, REST Services, and incorporating cloud components.
Expert in understanding of implications from design and implementation architecture choices toward building secure, scalable, durable, flexible, accessible solutions.
Strong knowledge of AWS or Azure and Cloud Computing concepts
Strong hands-on coding and code review. Golang preferred
Strong knowledge in best practices for:
System Architecture and design.
Data storage types (RDBMS, NoSQL, KV, Document, etc)
Platform and infrastructure
Application. PaaS services
Monitoring, auditing, and operations
In-depth working experience in a platform engineering culture; one or more Orchestration/Configuration Management and Continuous Integration technology. Docker/Kubernetes, AWS Codebuild/Codepipeline, Terraform & Datadog preferred
Linux Containers
Networking protocols such as HTTP, DNS and TCP/IP
One or more version control platform. Git preferred
Experience managing full application stacks from the OS up through custom applications
Expert in analyzing and troubleshooting applications.
Broad and deep understanding of relevant platform and applications capabilities, including established API’s, system activity components, process flows, the underlying data model, implementation specifics of important business rules, batch jobs, user interface components, and application configuration.
Familiarity and curiosity in the business context and trends, as well as the business customers’ opportunities. Awareness of the functional aspects of the solution.
Product platform life cycle - Strategy, development and deployment
Help define overall platform evolvement strategies and procedures
Help define operational processes to ensure predictable software development outcomes; refine Information Security processes and procedures.
Develop, recommend, evaluate, integrate, deploy, and maintain security tools including security framework.
Evaluate software security products and technologies.
Develop and deploy solutions in Agile methodology, with continuous delivery processes
Ability to lead and influence cross functional teams that include architects, analysts, developers and QA analysts
Ability to articulate ideas, using facts and data, for solutions to both technical and business communities
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Ability to influence and negotiate strategy and roadmaps in planning exercises
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
Ability to balance multiple priorities and meet deadlines
Ability to make timely and effective decisions using a mixture of intuition, analysis, experience and judgment

Responsibilities

Own and communicates highly complex ideas and concepts to non-technical peers and customers
Builds and maintains effective cross-functional, collaborative relationships with business and technology partners
Supports the development team and perform activities to resolve developer issues in a timely and accurate fashion
Owns design and support of engineering build and release processes
Builds and maintains effective relationships with technology vendors to deliver against business objectives
Conducts research and makes recommendations on standards, products, and services
Owns ensuring application and infrastructure architectural solutions are stable, secure, and compliant with Company standards and practices
Owns design and support of all technologies in accordance with Information Security's guiding principles for highly sensitive data
Owns design and support of high-availability operational support and automate solutions across the environment
Owns design and support of deep telemetry capabilities to provide ongoing success and performance metrics
Owns design and support of service monitoring across all platforms to ensure continuous availability and operational continuity of critical systems
Upholds company policies, and legal/regulatory requirements, such as PCI
Owns design and support of system configurations and baselines to support secure application development software control best practices and standards

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.