lead software engineer - Digital Partner Experience(Nashville, TN - U.S.)

Starbucks•Nashville, TN

5d•Onsite

About The Position

The Lead Software Engineer is the technical lead for the backend and infrastructure behind a partner-facing application that helps Starbucks store partners plan and manage their daily work. The role owns the architecture, delivery, deployment, and production health of the services and cloud infrastructure, and sets the team's technical direction. The engineer partners with product, QA, frontend, and platform teams to deliver reliable features and large, high-priority projects. The role leads Node.js/TypeScript services and their GraphQL and REST APIs, establishes backend standards and service patterns, and owns infrastructure-as-code, integrations, CI/CD, release management, testing approaches, security, and operational health. It also includes mentoring engineers, documenting technical and operational practices, and leading knowledge transfer when ownership changes.

Requirements

At least 8 years of professional software engineering experience, including leading backend or infrastructure delivery.
Strong backend development skills in Node.js and TypeScript or an equivalent technology such as Java/Spring Boot or .NET.
Strong grasp of service architecture, API design, data modeling, and distributed systems patterns.
Experience designing and maintaining services behind a federated GraphQL layer or API gateway.
Experience with infrastructure-as-code, such as Terraform, 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 or enterprise systems.
Experience owning services end to end, including 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, 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.
Ability to work well with product managers, architects, QA, frontend engineers, and business partners.
Ability to document architecture, support models, operational procedures, and technical decisions.

Responsibilities

Lead backend and infrastructure architecture, delivery, deployment, monitoring, and production support for Node.js/TypeScript services and their GraphQL/REST APIs.
Set backend standards, patterns, and technical direction for service boundaries, API design, data modeling, and schema composition across a federated GraphQL layer.
Own infrastructure-as-code for app hosting, serverless functions, databases, caching, messaging, and secret stores using Terraform or an equivalent tool.
Lead technical design reviews, code reviews, and architecture discussions, and make sound engineering decisions.
Break large projects into deliverable technical work and coordinate dependencies with frontend, product, and platform teams.
Design and operate integrations with downstream REST APIs, GraphQL services, and third-party systems.
Own CI/CD pipelines, release management, and cloud environment health, 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 API, authentication, data, and integration layers; improve monitoring, alerting, and production health.
Ensure services implement secure authentication and authorization patterns 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, and lead knowledge transfer when ownership changes.

Benefits

Medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, and other voluntary insurance benefits for partners and their families.
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 partners may participate 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.