senior technical product manager, Cloud Foundations (Seattle, WA)

Now Brewing: sr. technical product manager – Cloud Foundations! #tobeapartner

From the beginning, Starbucks set out to be a different kind of company. One that not only celebrated coffee and the rich tradition, but also brought a feeling of connection. We are known for developing extraordinary leaders who share this passion and are guided by their service to others.

As a Starbucks sr. technical product manager, you will . . .

Help shape and deliver the product strategy for Cloud Foundation Services (CFS), the secure, scalable, Starbucks-built cloud platform that enables engineering teams to build, deploy, observe, and operate modern services. You will treat the platform as a product, translating partner needs, cloud strategy, security and governance requirements, and engineering opportunities into a clear roadmap and measurable outcomes.

You will partner closely with platform engineering, architecture, security, FinOps, and application teams to simplify cloud adoption, improve developer experience, and expand reusable paved-road capabilities. The role will balance near-term delivery with the long-term evolution of landing zones, cloud control-plane capabilities, automated guardrails, CI/CD integration, observability, resilience, and self-service experiences across Starbucks Technology.

What you’ll do

Product Definition & Value

• Define and maintain the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for Cloud Foundation Services in alignment with Starbucks cloud strategy, architecture direction, security expectations, and business priorities.
• Discover and articulate partner problems, desired outcomes, and technical opportunities; convert them into well-formed epics, features, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Own prioritization across platform capabilities, technical debt, security and compliance commitments, reliability improvements, and developer-experience investments using a transparent value-based model.
• Define functional and non-functional requirements, including performance, scalability, resilience, usability, accessibility, security, privacy, compliance, supportability, and business continuity.
• Partner with engineering and architecture to evaluate solution options, document tradeoffs, and ensure capabilities align with transitional and target-state cloud architecture.
• Champion reusable paved roads, self-service patterns, automation, and consistent guardrails rather than one-off infrastructure or application-specific solutions.
• Represent the voice of engineering teams using the platform while balancing enterprise standards, operational sustainability, and long-term product health.

Customer Discovery, Analytics & KPIs

• Build an ongoing discovery practice with application teams, platform users, architects, security partners, and operations teams to identify friction and validate priorities.
• Define product-health, adoption, delivery, reliability, and developer-experience metrics; establish dashboard and reporting requirements that make progress and tradeoffs visible.
• Use qualitative feedback and quantitative data to measure feature value after launch, identify gaps, and feed learning back into the roadmap and backlog.
• Develop measurable outcomes for improvements such as onboarding lead time, self-service adoption, deployment success, policy compliance, platform availability, support demand, and cloud cost visibility.
• Present concise, data-driven recommendations to product, engineering, and technology leaders.

Leadership & Communication

• Own effective working relationships with Cloud Foundations engineering leaders and partner teams across Starbucks Technology.
• Facilitate alignment among engineering, architecture, security, FinOps, operations, and business stakeholders when requirements or priorities compete.
• Eliminate ambiguity by framing decisions, options, assumptions, dependencies, risks, and decision owners clearly.
• Communicate roadmap intent, delivery progress, product outcomes, and changes in priority to technical and executive audiences.
• Influence without direct authority, negotiate practical tradeoffs, and resolve most cross-functional issues independently.
• Help teams strengthen product-thinking, customer empathy, outcome measurement, and backlog quality.

Product Planning & Delivery

• Manage the product backlog and planning rhythm in close partnership with engineering leadership and delivery partners.
• Work with cross-functional engineering teams on discovery, feature sizing, sequencing, dependency management, release planning, and readiness.
• Validate delivered capabilities against acceptance criteria and intended outcomes; facilitate partner review and user acceptance where appropriate.
• Identify and remove product-level blockers, escalate decisions early, and keep stakeholders aligned on scope, milestones, and tradeoffs.
• Practice iterative, agile product development and continuously improve product lifecycle, feedback, and release mechanisms.
• Coordinate launch, adoption, documentation, enablement, and change-management needs so new platform capabilities are understandable and usable.

We’d love to hear from people with

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, Product Management, or a related field.
• Demonstrated ability to use analytics, product metrics, and customer insights to inform product planning and prioritization (4 years).
• Demonstrated ability to partner with engineering and design or user-experience teams to deliver technical or customer-facing capabilities (4 years).
• Hands-on experience developing roadmaps, priorities, features, story outlines, user stories, acceptance criteria, and refined product backlogs in a fast-paced environment with multiple stakeholders (4 years).
• Industry experience in a technology environment with a record of delivering complex products or platforms (4+ years).
• Experience managing product delivery through iterative or agile development practices.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts, tradeoffs, and product decisions clearly to engineering teams, business partners, and senior leaders.

Preferred qualifications

• Product management experience with cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, internal developer platforms, developer tooling, or enterprise shared services.
• Working knowledge of public-cloud services and operating models, particularly AWS and/or Azure, including landing zones, identity and access, networking, security controls, observability, resilience, and cost governance.
• Experience creating self-service platform experiences, golden paths, service catalogs, APIs, portals, or automated policy guardrails for engineering teams.
• Understanding of cloud-native application patterns, containers and Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, APIs, event-driven architectures, and production operations.
• Experience defining or using measures such as adoption, onboarding time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, availability, support demand, policy compliance, unit cost, or customer satisfaction.
• Ability to navigate complex cross-functional environments and align platform, security, architecture, finance, and application stakeholders around shared outcomes.
• Strong written and verbal communication, structured decision-making, and executive presentation skills.
• Certified Scrum Product Owner, product management certification, cloud certification, or FinOps certification is helpful but not required.
• Experience in large-scale retail, consumer technology, or another enterprise environment with high availability, security, and compliance expectations is a plus.

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.

The actual base pay offered to the successful candidate will be based on multiple factors, including but not limited to job-related knowledge/skills, experience, geographical location, and internal equity. At Starbucks, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at the high end of the range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent upon the facts and circumstances of each position and candidate.

We believe we do our best work when we're together, which is why we're onsite four days a week.

Join us and inspire with every cup. Apply today!

Starbucks Coffee Company is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with all federal, state and local ordinances.

Starbucks Coffee Company is committed to offering reasonable accommodations to job applicants with disabilities. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please contact us at [email protected] or 1(888) 611-2258.