Technical Product Manager, Principal, Customer Experience Engineering

The principal Technical Product Manager for Customer Experience Engineering at Starbucks is an onsite role based in Seattle, WA. This position translates business problems into target metrics and epics or user stories for engineering teams to design, build, and monitor digital solutions, contributing to the usability and performance of Starbucks digital products by delivering engaging user experiences. Salary range: USD 157,300 to 262,100 annually.

Responsibilities

• Lead the TPM practice within the Customer Experience Engineering team, enabling Mobile Order & Pay, Loyalty, and Digital Marketing experiences across Starbucks iOS, Android, and Web applications.
• Directly report to the CXE Director and collaborate with the TPM Manager and team to develop, document, socialize, and promote TPM best practices and processes.
• Identify business needs, assess market demands and technical trends, solve problems, and propose solutions.
• Align with business partners and stakeholders to balance business and technical objectives, translating them into prioritized work items and clear user stories for the CXE team.
• Guide product planning and development through daily collaboration with a cross-functional team including architects, developers, designers, and subject matter representatives.
• Translate customer experience requirements into technical specifications and product solutions.
• Define non-functional requirements covering performance, scalability, resilience, usability, accessibility, security, and business continuity.
• Create data flows and functional and technical specifications as needed.
• Identify opportunities to enhance feature performance and overall product health through data analysis.
• Stay current with emerging technology capabilities and apply that knowledge to product solutions.
• Recommend and plan innovative products and features.
• Define and analyze metrics that measure and benchmark product success, including product health and performance metrics.
• Specify dashboarding and reporting needs and KPIs to track product performance.
• Assess feature success post deployment and feed insights back to the team and business partners.
• Engage with business and technology stakeholders to understand problems and collaborate with technology to define solutions that meet business needs using best practices.
• Present options and recommendations clearly to support business stakeholder decisions.
• Work with engineering teams to understand, prioritize, and document technical and non-functional features.
• Maintain productive relationships with engineering teams across Starbucks Technology.
• Apply iterative, agile development practices.
• Identify and document technical tradeoffs, dependencies, and constraints.
• Validate features against stated goals and acceptance criteria.
• Assist in resolving technical blockers and coordinate solutions across multiple technical teams.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams on feature sizing and delivery planning.
• Communicate product delivery milestones and progress effectively.
• Coordinate with product managers, producers, engineering, and QA to align on feature sizing and delivery planning.
• Validate features against customer and business goals and acceptance criteria.
• Work with product managers to scope and prioritize upcoming projects for the roadmap.
• Contribute to a cross-team digital product roadmap.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, or a related field.
• Minimum five years of experience using analytics and optimization tools to inform product planning and prioritization.
• At least five years collaborating with design and engineering teams to deliver customer facing features.
• Hands-on experience developing roadmaps, priorities, features, story outlines, writing user stories, refining backlogs, and coordinating conflicting requirements in a fast-paced environment with diverse stakeholders.
• Solid understanding of API technologies including REST, authentication, JSON/XML, error handling, and versioning.
• More than five years of industry experience in a technology environment with a track record of delivering complex products.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.

Technologies

• iOS
• Android
• Web
• REST
• JSON
• XML

Preferred Qualifications

• Five or more years of industry experience delivering complex products in a technology environment.
• Recent experience defining or building mobile platform applications.
• Ability to read and understand programming languages.
• Prior programming experience is a plus.