Did the full Starbucks Technology loop for a senior engineering role out of their Seattle office. Came from a larger tech company so I went in with some assumptions that got corrected pretty fast.
Recruiter screen was normal, 30 minutes, mix of background and comp alignment. Then a technical screen with a senior engineer, an hour, LeetCode-style but medium difficulty, they weren't trying to trick you. The interviewer was straightforward about what they were testing.
The onsite was four rounds: two technical (one system design, one coding), one behavioral with the hiring manager, and one with a cross-functional partner from the loyalty/digital team. The behavioral round was where it got interesting. They came with questions that were clearly mapped to their leadership principles, specifically things about "connecting with partners" and handling ambiguity in a retail context. If you've only worked at pure software companies, you have to actually think about how your work touches physical stores and frontline workers. Interviewers noticed when candidates clearly hadn't.
System design question was about a distributed notifications system, not surprising for a company running a loyalty app at that scale.
They move slowly compared to my last job. Four weeks from onsite to offer. Not ghosting, just process. The recruiter stayed in contact throughout which helped.
Overall: real company, real engineering problems, culture is notably more human than a lot of places I've interviewed.