principal engineer, AI Experiences, Enterprise Applications & Decision Platforms

About the role

Starbucks is seeking a visionary Principal Engineer to define and lead the next generation of enterprise data, application, and AI-enabled experiences. This role supports the development of artificial intelligence, enterprise data platforms, application architecture, user experience, and governance. The successful candidate will be responsible for shaping how employees, analysts, operators, and leaders interact with enterprise information, analytics, workflows, and intelligent systems. The ideal candidate will support the development of the architecture, standards, and engineering practices that transform governed enterprise data into intuitive, scalable, and secure user experiences. This includes defining how conversational interfaces, intelligent applications, workflow systems, analytical tools, and decision-support technologies come together as a cohesive ecosystem. A key aspect of the role is helping the organization evolve from fragmented reporting and application experiences toward unified, AI-enabled platforms that deliver context-aware insights, recommendations, automation, and action-oriented decision support.

Responsibilities

• Define the long-term vision for how users discover, access, and interact with enterprise knowledge, analytics, and intelligent systems.
• Define architectural patterns for conversational interfaces, AI assistants, recommendation engines, and agent-based solutions.
• Create a cohesive strategy that connects data, analytics, workflows, and AI into seamless business experiences.
• Guide the evolution toward proactive, context-aware decision support and automation.
• Define the architecture of modern business applications built on governed enterprise data.
• Establish standards for application hosting, user experience, integration, deployment, and lifecycle management.
• Create scalable frameworks that allow teams to rapidly develop applications while maintaining consistency, governance, and security.
• Drive simplification and rationalization across overlapping application and reporting technologies.
• Support leaders to establish principles that provide users with a consistent way to discover and access business capabilities.
• Enable a marketplace-style experience that balances self-service innovation with governance and operational control.
• Ensure experiences remain intuitive regardless of the underlying technology stack.
• Partner with business and technology teams to identify opportunities where AI can accelerate decision making and reduce manual effort.
• Define reusable patterns for intelligent workflows and automated actions.
• Establish standards for integrating AI capabilities into operational and analytical experiences.
• Promote responsible and governed adoption of emerging AI technologies.
• Support and champion the development of semantic models, metadata strategies, business ontologies, and knowledge frameworks that improve AI effectiveness.
• Enable systems to understand relationships between data, processes, users, and business concepts.
• Drive contextualization strategies that improve discoverability, reuse, and decision quality.
• Establish foundations for enterprise-scale intelligent systems.
• Support leaders in the development of scalable access control and authorization patterns for business-facing applications and AI experiences.
• Create reference architectures and engineering standards that support secure, compliant, and maintainable systems.
• Ensure innovation can occur without creating fragmentation, duplication, or operational risk.
• Serve as a recognized technical authority across multiple organizations.
• Influence architecture strategy at senior leadership levels.
• Mentor engineers, architects, and technical leaders.
• Lead architecture reviews, technology evaluations, and standards development.
• Drive alignment across engineering, product, security, user experience, and business stakeholders.

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, enterprise architecture, or related disciplines.
• Demonstrated experience designing and scaling enterprise platforms and distributed systems.
• Deep understanding of cloud-native architectures, APIs, application frameworks, and modern software delivery practices.
• Experience designing systems that balance usability, governance, security, and scalability.
• Strong background in analytics, AI, data-powered applications, or intelligent systems.
• Proven ability to influence technical direction across organizational boundaries.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with generative AI, conversational interfaces, intelligent agents, or recommendation systems.
• Experience building internal platforms, marketplaces, portals, or developer ecosystems.
• Knowledge of metadata management, semantic technologies, knowledge graphs, and ontology-driven architectures.
• Experience designing highly governed enterprise applications and platforms.
• Familiarity with enterprise-scale analytics and decision-support environments.
• Experience integrating operational workflows with analytical and AI-driven capabilities.

What success looks like

Within the first 12–18 months, this leader will:

• Define a clear enterprise strategy for AI-enabled business experiences.
• Establish architectural patterns for intelligent applications and decision-support systems.
• Create a scalable framework for application development and governance.
• Reduce fragmentation across enterprise applications, reporting tools, and analytical experiences.
• Enable teams to innovate rapidly while maintaining consistency, security, and operational excellence.
• Improve access to trusted information and accelerate decision making across the organization.
• Lay the foundation for a future where intelligent systems proactively assist users, recommend actions, and automate routine decision-making processes.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Basic and supplemental life insurance
• Other voluntary insurance benefits
• Short-term and long-term disability
• Paid parental leave and 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
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Discounted company stock program (S.I.P.)
• 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 per week.