ioT engineer senior, Seattle WA

About the role

Starbucks is seeking a Senior IoT Engineer to design, build, and operate the next generation of connected device platforms powering retail operations across thousands of stores. This role requires deep technical expertise across the complete technology stack, from embedded and edge devices to cloud services, event streaming architectures, databases, APIs, observability platforms, and web applications. The ideal candidate is a highly versatile engineer with strong experience in C++, Python, Robotics, and modern web development. They are comfortable developing software that runs directly on connected hardware, building scalable cloud services, creating event data pipelines, and delivering intuitive user interfaces used by operations teams and support organizations.

This position partners closely with Digital Display Engineering, Retail Technology, Store Operations, Product Engineering, Cyber Security, Network Engineering, and Data Engineering teams to deliver secure, reliable, and scalable connected solutions across Starbucks stores.

Responsibilities

• IoT Platform Engineering
  • Design and develop software solutions supporting thousands of connected retail devices operating in production environments.
  • Build and maintain scalable IoT platforms responsible for device connectivity, provisioning, telemetry collection, command and control functions, and lifecycle management.
  • Develop solutions that span the complete technology stack from edge devices to cloud-hosted services.
  • Drive platform reliability, resiliency, security, and maintainability.
• Edge and Embedded Development
  • Develop and maintain software components written in C++ running on edge and embedded devices.
  • Design solutions that communicate with sensors, controllers, peripherals, and connected retail equipment.
  • Optimize software for performance, reliability, resource utilization, and fault tolerance.
  • Troubleshoot hardware and software interactions across complex device ecosystems.
  • Participate in architecture reviews and technology evaluations for new connected device platforms.
• Backend Services & API Development
  • Design, develop, and maintain Python-based microservices and APIs.
  • Build scalable service architectures supporting device onboarding, telemetry ingestion, configuration management, and operational workflows.
  • Create APIs used by internal engineering teams, operational support teams, and external platform integrations.
  • Implement authentication, authorization, security controls, and operational safeguards across services.
  • Develop automated testing, validation, and deployment pipelines.
  • Manage Kubernetes infrastructure.
• Architecture & Data Platforms
  • Design and support Kafka-based messaging and event streaming solutions.
  • Build reliable event-driven workflows supporting near real-time device monitoring and business operations.
  • Create scalable ingestion pipelines for telemetry, health monitoring, operational events, and diagnostic data.
  • Develop systems for event correlation, alerting, automation, and operational intelligence.
  • Support high-volume data processing workloads across distributed systems.
• Database Engineering
  • Design and maintain MySQL database architectures supporting large-scale IoT platforms.
  • Develop schemas, indexing strategies, and performance optimizations for operational workloads.
  • Implement data retention strategies, reporting capabilities, and operational analytics support.
  • Ensure data integrity, consistency, security, and scalability.
  • Troubleshoot production database performance issues and optimize query execution.
• Full Stack Application Development
  • Design and implement ReactJS-based web applications supporting operational and engineering workflows.
  • Create dashboards, monitoring views, fleet management tools, analytics portals, and administrative interfaces.
  • Develop intuitive user experiences for support engineers, operators, and business stakeholders.
  • Collaborate with UX and product teams to improve operational efficiency through software design.
  • Build responsive, maintainable, and scalable front-end architectures.
• Device Connectivity & Networking
  • Engineer solutions supporting secure communication between devices and cloud services.
  • Troubleshoot network connectivity issues across Ethernet, Wi-Fi, VPN, and cloud-connected environments.
  • Support secure authentication mechanisms including certificates, token-based authentication, and enterprise identity systems.
  • Partner with Cyber Security teams to ensure compliance with enterprise security standards.
  • Improve observability and diagnostics throughout the connectivity stack.
• Monitoring, Reliability & Operations
  • Develop platform observability using metrics, telemetry, logging, tracing, and alerting systems.
  • Create automated remediation workflows and self-healing platform capabilities.
  • Participate in production support, incident response, root cause analysis, and reliability improvement initiatives.
  • Drive operational excellence through automation and proactive engineering practices.
  • Establish reliability objectives and service performance standards.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Minimum 5 years of professional software engineering experience in IoT, distributed systems, cloud platforms, or large-scale connected device ecosystems.
• Strong proficiency in:
  • C++
  • Python
  • SQL
  • JavaScript / TypeScript
  • ReactJS
• Experience developing software on Linux-based platforms.
• Experience building and supporting RESTful APIs and microservice architectures.
• Strong experience with:
  • Kafka
  • MySQL
  • Distributed systems
  • Cloud-based architectures
• Experience designing and operating production systems at enterprise scale.
• Solid understanding of networking fundamentals including TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, routing, and secure communications.
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and modern software delivery practices.
• Strong troubleshooting and debugging skills across software, infrastructure, and network layers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting large-scale retail technology platforms.
• Experience with MQTT, AMQP, LoRaWAN, or other IoT messaging protocols.
• Experience with Kubernetes and containerized workloads.
• Experience with Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience developing edge-compute and gateway solutions.
• Experience integrating operational technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) environments.
• Experience with observability platforms such as Datadog, Grafana, Splunk, Prometheus, or Azure Monitor.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and cloud automation frameworks.
• Familiarity with digital displays, connected appliances, sensors, or other commercial retail devices.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family.
• Basic and supplemental life insurance, and other voluntary insurance benefits.
• Short-term and long-term disability coverage.
• Paid parental leave and family expansion reimbursement.
• Paid vacation from date of hire (accrual details vary by location and role level).
• Sick time accrued at 1 hour for every 25 hours worked.
• Eight paid holidays and two personal days per year.
• 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.

Schedule

Onsite four days a week.