10 Starbucks engineering leaders
Starbucks engineering here reaches from Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer Anand Varadarajan and former EVP and CTO Deb Hall Lefevre to directors of engineering for retail technology, supply chain planning and platform work, and eight of the ten still hold Starbucks titles. Three vice presidents hold infrastructure titles spanning cloud, platform and operations, a good match for anyone planning store systems or cloud operations.
Professionals to explore
Anand Varadarajan
LinkedInExperience: Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer · Starbucks
Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer at Starbucks since 2026, Anand Varadarajan was Vice President, Worldwide Grocery Technology and Supply Chain at Amazon (2007–2026) and earlier a Software Lead at Motorola Mobility (a Lenovo Company) (2004–2007), a background that fits questions on how the CTO connects store, supply chain and customer technology.
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Chris Boyle
LinkedInExperience: Vice President, Infrastructure, Engineering, and Operations · Starbucks
Infrastructure and operations sit together in Chris Boyle's title as Vice President, Infrastructure, Engineering, and Operations at Starbucks since 2025. Boyle's other Starbucks titles are Vice President, Infrastructure Engineering & Operations (2024–2025), Vice President, Infrastructure & Cloud Services (2023–2024) and Director, Enterprise Infrastructure Services (2020–2023), which suits questions on enterprise infrastructure operations.
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Deb Hall Lefevre
LinkedInExperience: Former EVP and CTO · Starbucks
Customer digital technology, large-scale retail operations, cloud computing, cybersecurity and AI are the experience Deb Hall Lefevre cites, with EVP and CTO titles at Starbucks (2022–2025) and at Couche-Tard Circle K under Alimentation Couche-Tard (2017–2022). Lefevre was Corporate VP Global Enterprise Solutions & Business Transformation at McDonald's (2015–2017) and has been a Board Member at Wintrust Financial Corporation since 2019.
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Ganesh Anantharaman
LinkedInExperience: Director Engineering - Supply Chain Planning · Starbucks
Ganesh Anantharaman has been Director Engineering - Supply Chain Planning at Starbucks since 2016, leading global supply chain products in their own words, and was Manager Quality Engineering there (2013–2016). Anantharaman was a Principal Consultant at Infosys (2001–2013), which makes supply chain planning systems the clearest topic for a call.
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Jerry Jia
LinkedInExperience: Vice President of Cloud and Infrastructure Engineering · Starbucks
Global cloud architecture and infrastructure engineering strategies have been Jerry Jia's responsibility as Vice President of Cloud and Infrastructure Engineering at Starbucks since 2020. Jia was Senior Director of Cloud Platform Architecture there (2016–2020) and Embedded Systems Engineering Manager at Microchip Technology Inc. (2011–2016), useful for cloud provider and architecture decisions.
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Muneeb Ashraf
LinkedInExperience: Director of Engineering · Starbucks
Platform engineering and AI enablement are Muneeb Ashraf's focus as Director of Engineering at Starbucks since 2025, leading multiple teams. Ashraf was Engineering Manager (2020–2025), Lead Software Engineer (2019–2020) and Senior Software Engineer (2017–2019) at Starbucks, useful for how internal platform teams support product engineers.
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Natarajan Venkatakrishnan
LinkedInExperience: Former VP Engineering - Equipment, Packaging, Processing and Tryer Center · Starbucks
Natarajan Venkatakrishnan was VP Engineering - Equipment, Packaging, Processing and Tryer Center at Starbucks (2017–2021) and has been SVP Partner & Customer Solutions since 2021, leading business strategy, engineering, store testing and Tryer teams. Venkatakrishnan was also CEO at FirstBuild (2013–2017) and Executive Director - Advanced Technologies at GE Appliances, a Haier company (2008–2013), a fit for store equipment and testing questions.
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Sudarshan Anand
LinkedInExperience: Director of Engineering Customer and Retail Technology · Starbucks
Sudarshan Anand has been Director of Engineering Customer and Retail Technology at Starbucks since 2025 and was Director Of Engineering, Corporate Technology (2021–2025), Manager of Application Development (2017–2021) and QA Manager (2014–2017) there. Anand's mix of retail, corporate and quality roles suits questions on delivering customer and store software.
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Tal Saraf
LinkedInExperience: Former Senior Vice President Engineering and Architecture · Starbucks
From 2016 to 2019, Tal Saraf was Senior Vice President Engineering and Architecture at Starbucks, then Vice President Of Engineering, Head of People Engineering at Meta (2019–2022) and Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President Customer Engineering at Atlassian (2022–2026). Saraf describes building and scaling infrastructure for large technology services, so the former Starbucks architecture seat suits questions on platform design choices.
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Todd Shaver
LinkedInExperience: Vice President Infrastructure Platform Engineering · Starbucks
Keeping store infrastructure reliable and site reliability practice are the questions for Todd Shaver, Vice President Infrastructure Platform Engineering at Starbucks (since 2024), who was Vice President, Retail Infrastructure and SRE (2017–2024) and Director, DevOps (2016–2017) there. Shaver also held Director, Systems Engineering at The Walt Disney Company (2012–2016).
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Choose the right perspective
Organization-level questions belong with Anand Varadarajan, Deb Hall Lefevre or Tal Saraf, though only Varadarajan holds the CTO title today. Todd Shaver, Jerry Jia and Chris Boyle hold the infrastructure titles across platform, cloud and operations; Sudarshan Anand, Ganesh Anantharaman and Muneeb Ashraf fit team-level questions on retail technology, supply chain planning and platform engineering, and Natarajan Venkatakrishnan fits store equipment and testing.
Questions to take into the conversation
- 01How does Starbucks divide engineering ownership between in-store systems, customer-facing technology and corporate platforms?
- 02What does Starbucks require of its infrastructure teams before a new store technology rolls out across its locations?
- 03How do Starbucks equipment and supply chain engineering teams work with software teams when a new beverage or store process launches?
About this directory
This is a professional research starting point based on business profile data retrieved on . Titles and companies reflect that source snapshot; roles marked former had ended by then. Check the linked profiles for current details. Inclusion does not imply Instant Expert membership or availability.