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About the job

Now Brewing – Application Development Leaders! #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 that 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.

In this role, you will lead a team that designs, builds, tests, deploys, and supports the technology products used by Starbucks Licensees, Global Channel Development, and Legal partners. You will manage both application developers and technical product managers, and will be accountable for the success of the products and services the team delivers, from strategy and roadmap through engineering delivery and day-to-day operations.

You will lead a team that owns a portfolio of internal and external facing products built on Salesforce, including the CRM, Digital Hubs, and Contract Lifecycle Management, supporting the International Retail licensee and Global Channel Development businesses. Together, these products serve Licensees, Channel Partners, Legal, and internal Starbucks users across a global audience. You will also own the MuleSoft integration layer that connects these products to enterprise systems and lead the team’s adoption of AI capabilities, such as Salesforce Agentforce and AI-assisted development, to deliver new value for partners and improve engineering productivity.

As the leader, you will craft a technology vision and capability roadmap aligned to business objectives, ensure work is well resourced, structured, budgeted, and prioritized, and build a culture of engineering quality, customer service, and continuous improvement. You will lead, influence, and partner across business teams, Starbucks Technology functions, offshore delivery partners, and SaaS vendors.

As an application development manager , you will…

Leadership and Team Building

Lead and manage a team of application developers and technical product managers, setting clear goals and team responsibilities.

Hire, coach, and develop partners through regular feedback, performance management, talent planning, and career development, and make sound staffing decisions.

Provide technical leadership and foster innovation, coaching cross-functional team members and ensuring compliance with Starbucks policies.

Plan resources across internal partners, staff augmentation, and offshore delivery partners to meet demand.

Product Ownership, Strategy and Roadmap

Own the vision, strategy, and capability roadmap for the technology products and services, aligned to International Retail, Global Channel Development, and Legal objectives.

Serve as the focal point for the solutions, including application configuration and services, and champion user experience and user-centric design.

Evaluate new technologies and solution approaches, assessing the benefits, costs, and viability of options before recommending investments.

MuleSoft Integration Platform: Anypoint/MuleSoft APIs and integrations connecting Salesforce platforms to enterprise systems; includes runtime upgrades, API lifecycle, reuse, and platform health.

AI & Agentic Capabilities: Salesforce Agentforce and related AI features across the Salesforce platform, including agent use cases for licensee, partner, and internal users, plus AI-assisted development practices for the engineering team.

Engineering Delivery (Design, Build, Test, Deploy)

Lead planning and execution: decomposing work, estimating, scheduling, prioritizing, and allocating resources using agile and waterfall methods as appropriate.

Drive the solution design process, including requirements, assessment, and backlog refinement, and coordinate architecture, development, QA, and dependencies across the delivery lifecycle.

Deliver secure, durable, scalable, flexible, and accessible solutions, applying established design patterns and coding standards.

Build a test-driven development culture with automated test coverage and continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD).

Platform Stewardship and Technical Excellence

Steward the platform vision and investments, balancing innovation with the reduction of technical debt.

Partner with Architecture, Security, Infrastructure, and QA, and follow enterprise governance processes.

Lead exploratory efforts with new technology and represent the platform in Starbucks Technology planning.

Integration & AI Innovation

Own the MuleSoft integration platform strategy and roadmap: API-led connectivity, reusable APIs, runtime currency and upgrades, monitoring/observability, security (e.g., client secret and certificate rotation) and capacity management.

Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Security, and the MuleSoft/Salesforce account teams on technical health reviews, API value realization and integration standards.

Identify, evaluate, and prioritize AI use cases, such as Agentforce agents for licensee and partner service, case handling, contract, and access workflows, through proofs of concept with clear success criteria, cost, and capacity trade-offs.

Establish responsible-AI guardrails with Legal, Security, and Data partners: data access, privacy, AI contract terms, human-in-the-loop controls, and governance of agents in production.

Drive adoption of AI-assisted development and testing (e.g., code generation, test automation, agent orchestration such as MuleSoft Agent Fabric) to improve team velocity and quality, and build the team's AI skills.

Measure and communicate AI outcomes (adoption, productivity, cost, user experience) to business and technology leadership.

Production Support and Sustainment

Own support processes and documentation for all products, including a 24x7 support model that leverages offshore options.

Track operational metrics, KPIs, and uptime, and lead the response to high-severity incidents.

Drive root cause analysis and trend review to prevent repeat issues and improve stability.

Vendor and Partner Management

Manage offshore delivery partners (for example, TCS) and SaaS vendors such as Salesforce and Conga, including contracts, SLAs, and delivery quality.

Influence vendor product roadmaps so platform capabilities keep pace with business needs.

Planning, Investment and Financial Management

Partner with the PMO on project investments and initiation, defining scope, budget, business case, and resources.

Manage team expenses and vendor spend, and ensure work is budgeted and prioritized against business value.

Business Partnership and Communication

Build trusted partnerships with leaders in International Retail, Global Channel Development, and Legal, translating business needs into technology outcomes.

Communicate plans, progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to technical and business audiences, including senior leadership.

We’d love to hear from people with:

8-10+ years of experience in product management, software development, technology delivery and operations.

5 years of experience managing systems or application development projects, including large systems.

3-5 years of experience leading or managing technical teams.

Experience managing enterprise integration platforms (e.g., MuleSoft) and APIs supporting SaaS applications.

Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Technical Proficiency

Experience with the Salesforce platform, including Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, and Sales Cloud.

Experience with integrations and APIs, Mulesoft preferred.

Working knowledge of DevOps and CI/CD, automated testing, and building high-quality, reusable software.

Understanding of application architecture, infrastructure and security, service-oriented architecture and service management.

Hands-on leadership of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform (API design, RAML/OAS, DataWeave, CloudHub/runtime management, API Manager) and enterprise integration patterns.

Experience delivering Salesforce Agentforce, Einstein/generative AI or other agentic AI solutions in production, including prompt design, grounding on CRM/Data Cloud data, and the Einstein Trust Layer.

Familiarity with AI governance, responsible-AI practices and AI-assisted software development tools.

Product and Domain

Domain proficiency across APIs, data models, business rules, batch jobs, user interfaces and application configuration management.

Strong grasp of the SDLC and technology operations, with user-centric design practiced through Agile Scrum.

Awareness of industry trends, and experience with partner, licensee, channel or legal business processes.

Leadership and Interpersonal

Proven ability to hire and grow a technical team, and to lead cross-functional teams of architects, analysts, technical product managers, developers and QA.

Influences roadmaps and decisions, and communicates effectively with technical and business partners, including senior leadership.

Analytical and decisive, comfortable with ambiguity, and able to balance competing priorities.

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 applicantaccommodation@starbucks.com or 1(888) 611-2258.