Starbucks has named former Amazon executive Anand Varadarajan as executive vice president and chief technology officer (CTO), effective Jan. 19.

The company is deepening its focus on technology to drive store execution, digital engagement and supply chain performance. Varadarajan will join Starbucks’ executive leadership team and lead the company’s global technology organization. He will report directly to CEO Laxman Narasimhan. Varadarajan succeeds Deb Hall Lefevre, who retired in September, and replaces interim CTO Ningyu Chen.

Varadarajan has 19 years of experience from Amazon. There, he most recently led technology and supply chain systems for the company’s worldwide grocery stores business. In that role, he oversaw platforms supporting store operations, merchandising, fulfillment, and logistics across Amazon’s physical and online grocery brands. His work focused on building large-scale, secure systems designed to improve speed, reliability and operational consistency while supporting rapid innovation.

About the Starbucks CTO Varadarajan

Earlier in his career, Varadarajan held software engineering roles at Oracle and worked at several startups. That gave him experience across both enterprise and high-growth technology environments.

Starbucks said Varadarajan’s background aligns closely with its technology priorities, which include expanding mobile ordering and payments, strengthening loyalty and personalization capabilities, modernizing in-store systems and improving supply chain visibility and execution. Digital orders account for a growing share of Starbucks’ transactions, increasing the importance of resilient platforms that connect customers, stores and distribution networks in real time.

In announcing the appointment, Narasimhan highlighted Varadarajan’s history in scaling mission-critical systems and leading global engineering teams, as well as his focus on developing talent and maintaining strong security and reliability standards.

Varadarajan holds an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Purdue University and computer science from the University of Washington.

The company said Varadarajan will build on work already underway as Starbucks looks to use technology as a core lever for operational improvement and customer experience.

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