Director, Core Digital Platforms

Our secret to leading the way in hospitality? We put our people first!

At Shake Shack, our mission is to Stand For Something Good in all that we do. From our teams to our neighborhoods, we’re committed to always doing the right thing. As one of the fastest-growing hospitality brands, we’re all about crafting unforgettable experiences for our guests. We offer endless learning opportunities and the chance to make a lasting impact on our business, restaurants, and communities.

As a member of the #Shack Fam, you’ll have access to hands‑on mentorship, training, and growth potential, all in a fun and inclusive environment.

Join us and Be a Part of Something Good.

Location:

Atlanta, GA (Preferred) or NYC
Reporting to: VP, Digital Technology & AI Engineering
Hybrid: 3 days in office (Tue/Wed/Thu)

This is a strategic and highly visible leadership role responsible for defining, operating, and scaling Shake Shack’s core digital platforms — including Shack Stack, Kiosk, and our foundational partner ecosystem.

The Director, Core Digital Platforms will serve as the technical owner of the digital platforms, ensuring best‑in‑class reliability, performance, security, and scalability. This role directly influences vendor roadmaps, shapes platform investment strategy, and enables new digital guest experiences through modular, extensible platform capabilities.

You will lead, develop, and inspire a team of Platform Managers and partner engineering organizations, driving clarity, accountability, and operational excellence. You will collaborate closely with Digital Engineering, Restaurant Technology, Digital Product, AI Engineering, Operations, and key technology partners.

• Set and communicate the vision and strategy for Shake Shack’s core digital platforms; align roadmaps to business growth and guest experience goals.
• Lead, mentor, and motivate a high‑performing team of Technical Platform Managers responsible for Shack Stack, Payments, OMS, Kiosk, Fraud, Identity, and Observability systems.
• Serve as the executive owner of foundational platform architecture, ensuring reliability, scalability, and seamless integration across internal APIs and partner systems.
• Influence and manage strategic vendor relationships (e.g., Okta, JTech/Sinch, Square, Freedom Pay, Kount), ensuring joint accountability, roadmap alignment, and measurable outcomes.
• Define and drive reliability and resilience standards — uptime SLAs, MTTR, incident response playbooks, error budgets, observability frameworks.
• Partner cross‑functionally with Product, Digital Engineering, Restaurant Tech, and AI teams to enable new digital capabilities and eliminate friction across the guest journey.
• Communicate platform health, performance insights, risk, and investment decisions with clarity to executive and operational stakeholders.

• Operate as a strategic leader who can flex between enterprise‑wide vision and hands‑on decision making.
• Communicate with clarity, executive presence, and influence across technical and non‑technical groups.
• Build a culture of ownership, accountability, continuous improvement, and high performance.
• Inspire and empower teams through transparent leadership, development, and coaching.

• 10+ years in technology leadership roles managing mission‑critical platforms in high‑scale consumer, digital commerce, or QSR environments.
• Strong technical acumen in microservices, APIs, identity, payments, fraud, and cloud (AWS) architectures.
• Demonstrated success managing vendor partnerships, negotiations, and influencing product roadmaps.
• Proven ability to hire, coach, develop, and grow high‑performing teams.
• Ability to communicate effectively with executives and lead change at scale.

• >99.99% uptime across guest‑facing platforms
• Reduced operational incidents and platform risk
• Incremental and value‑driven feature delivery and faster execution velocity across digital platforms streams
• Strong vendor accountability and improved cost‑to‑value outcomes
• A motivated, empowered, high‑performing team

• Weekly Pay and Performance bonuses

• Shake Shack Meal Discounts

• Exclusive corporate…