Lead Architect, Next‑Gen POS & Retail Platforms

Starbucks; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

Life insurance and disability

401(k) with company match

Starbucks equity program (Bean Stock)

Tuition coverage program

Job summary

Starbucks seeks a Principal Engineer to drive the technical vision for store‑edge and cloud platforms powering NGPOS and in‑store experiences. You will shape multi‑year roadmaps, balance reliability, security, and performance, and partner with product, security, and SRE teams to deliver scalable, high‑availability systems for thousands of stores.

You will mentor engineers, establish standards, and lead critical initiatives across the enterprise.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering with leadership in architecture.
• 7+ years leading delivery for retail systems such as POS.
• 2+ years delivering cloud and edge‑compute architectures.
• Bachelor’s degree in CS/SE or equivalent experience.
• Ability to translate business needs into actionable plans and measurable outcomes.
• Strong ability to influence across teams and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Drive technical vision and architecture for store‑edge and cloud platforms.
• Lead architecture decisions across distributed retail systems and POS.
• Translate strategy into multi‑year roadmaps and investment plans.
• Mentor engineers and foster a culture of technical excellence.
• Ensure reliability, security, and operational readiness of platforms.

Skills

Software architecture

Cloud & edge compute

Distributed systems

Cross-functional leadership

Mentoring engineers

Executive communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/SE or related

Tools

Golang

TypeScript

Kubernetes

AWS

Datadog/OpenTelemetry

Job description

Starbucks seeks a Principal Engineer to drive the technical vision for store‑edge and cloud platforms powering NGPOS and in‑store experiences. You will shape multi‑year roadmaps, balance reliability, security, and performance, and partner with product, security, and SRE teams to deliver scalable, high‑availability systems for thousands of stores.

You will mentor engineers, establish standards, and lead critical initiatives across the enterprise.