Director, Core Digital Platforms

Preferred location

• Atlanta, GA Support Center (2 Ballpark Center, 800 Battery Ave SE Atlanta, GA)
• Hybrid: 3 days in office (Tue/Wed/Thu)

Eligible locations

• New York Support Center (225 Varick St. New York, NY)
• Atlanta, GA Support Center (2 Ballpark Center, 800 Battery Ave SE Atlanta, GA)
• Hybrid: 3 days in office (Tue/Wed/Thu)

Role Overview

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

Reporting to VP Digital Technology & AI Engineering, the Director of Core Digital Platforms will serve as the technical owner of the foundational digital platforms, ensuring reliability, performance, security, and scalability, behind the scene, that powers our digital experiences. This role directly influences vendor roadmaps, shapes platform investment strategy, and enables new digital guest experiences through modular, extensible platform capabilities. This role is critical to scaling our digital capabilities as Shake Shack grows toward 1,500+ Shacks.

Key Responsibilities

• 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 overseeing core systems including Shack Stack, Payments, OMS, Kiosk, Fraud, Identity, and Observability. Serve as the Technical Platform Owner for AI Platforms, providing strategic and hands‑on leadership to drive performance, reliability, and innovation.
• 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, FreedomPay, 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 engineering 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.

Leadership Expectations

• 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.

Qualifications

• 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.

Success Measures

• >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 from SaaS Products
• A motivated, empowered, high‑performing team
• Meaningful and sustainable AI adoption

Benefits at Shake Shack

A work environment where you can come as you are, share your ideas, have fun, and work collaboratively:

• Weekly Pay and Performance bonuses
• Shake Shack Meal Discounts
• Exclusive corporate discounts for travel, electronics, wellness, leisure activities and more
• Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance*
• Employer Paid Life and Disability Insurance*
• 401k Plan with Company Match*
• Paid Time Off*
• Paid Parental Leave*
• Access to Employee Assistance Program on Day 1
• Pre‑Tax Commuter and Parking Benefits
• Flexible Spending and Dependent Care Accounts*
• Development and Growth Opportunities

*Eligibility criteria applies

Equal Opportunity Employer

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic, including race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, age, disability (mental and physical), sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, gender expression, medical condition, genetic information, marital, military and veteran status.