Starbucks cuts another 224 Seattle jobs, including tech roles, as restructuring winds down

by Todd Bishop on Aug 21, 2026 at 1:02 pm August 21, 2026 at 1:04 pm Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Email A former Starbucks cafe in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Starbucks is eliminating 224 more jobs at its Seattle headquarters, according to a new state filing. The coffee giant says the layoffs don’t represent a new round of cutbacks, but rather the lingering effect of restructuring work announced earlier this year. About 120 of the 224 are employees who were offered roles in Starbucks’ new Nashville office and declined to relocate, according to the filing. Those roles are expected to be filled in Tennessee. The remaining 104 in the notice filed Thursday stem from the restructuring that Starbucks announced in May , and fall largely within the group that designs, sites and builds its coffeehouses. The reductions are part of the “Back to Starbucks” turnaround CEO Brian Niccol launched after taking over in September 2024 — an effort that has paired store-level technology upgrades and a simplified menu with a restructuring of the company’s corporate ranks. Starbucks has now eliminated 537 corporate jobs tied to its Seattle headquarters this year, across three state filings: 61 tech roles in May, 252 support center jobs later that month, and the 224 disclosed this week across tech and store development positions. Starbucks is targeting $2 billion in cost reductions over two years under Niccol, and has shed more than 2,300 corporate jobs companywide since last year, according to Bloomberg . At the same time, Starbucks is building out its Nashville office, a $100 million investment expected to house 2,000 support jobs within five years. The company has said the majority of its corporate teams will remain in Seattle. The design and development cuts come later than the rest of the May restructuring because the executive who leads the group, Stephen Piacentini, joined Starbucks from Chipotle in April , and the organizational changes in his group weren’t finalized when the May restructuring was announced.