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.