Staff Software Engineer, Machine Learning

Toast

Toast creates technology to help restaurants and local businesses succeed in a digital world, helping business owners operate, increase sales, engage customers, and keep employees happy. The Machine Learning Platform team builds and operates the core infrastructure that powers ML across Toast — the feature store, model hosting and serving, the experimentation platform, training pipelines, and the tooling ML engineers and data scientists rely on every day. Our work directly enables the models that drive personalization, forecasting, fraud detection, search, and the growing set of AI-powered experiences shipping to restaurants. Toast is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to act as a technical leader on the ML Platform team, shaping the systems that will carry Toast's ML capabilities into the next decade. The role involves driving architectural direction across the platform, delivering foundational infrastructure that other teams build on, and elevating fellow engineers. The ideal candidate is a domain expert who partners with ML engineers, data scientists, product, and infrastructure leadership on high-leverage opportunities. This position suits an engineer comfortable writing production code, leading technical design for distributed systems, and influencing organizational decisions about how Toast builds and deploys ML. A day in the life (Responsibilities) * Own technical direction of the ML Platform — feature store, model hosting and serving, experimentation, training infrastructure — driving architectural decisions around scalability, reliability, latency, and cost * Lead design and delivery of large-scope platform initiatives from conception through production, coordinating across ML, data, and infrastructure teams * Identify and resolve systemic technical challenges: online/offline feature parity, model deployment friction, experimentation velocity, GPU utilization, cross-team dependencies * Set and maintain a high engineering quality bar through hands-on code contributions, design reviews, and mentorship of platform and ML-adjacent engineers * Partner with ML engineering, data science, product, and platform leadership to translate ML strategy into technical roadmaps * Define the paved paths ML teams use to ship models safely — from feature registration through canary rollout, monitoring, and rollback * Leverage AI-augmented development tools to increase development velocity and code quality What you'll need to thrive (Requirements): * 8+ years delivering complex backend or infrastructure systems at scale * Direct experience building or operating core ML infrastructure — feature stores, model serving, experimentation platforms, training orchestration, or equivalent * Mastery of a modern backend language such as Python, Java, Kotlin, Go, or Scala * Deep proficiency with distributed systems concepts: consistency, latency, throughput, fault tolerance, and observability * Strong understanding of data modeling, query languages, and the online/offline data patterns that underpin ML systems * Demonstrated technical leadership, with ability to drive cross-team alignment and influence engineering, product, and business stakeholders * Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience Nice to Haves: * Hands-on experience with open-source or commercial ML platform components (e.g. Tecton, MLflow, SageMaker, Databricks) * Experience building or operating experimentation / A-B testing platforms at scale * Familiarity with real-time streaming systems (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming) and their use in feature computation * Experience serving LLMs or large deep-learning models in production, including GPU capacity planning and inference optimization * Comfort with Kubernetes and modern cloud-native infrastructure * Prior work supporting internal-developer-facing platforms with a product mindset AI at Toast At Toast, one of our company values is that we're hungry to build and learn. We believe learning new AI tools empowers us to build for our customers faster, more independently, and with higher quality. We provide these tools across all disciplines, from Engineering and Product to Sales and Support, and are inspired by how our Toasters are already driving real value with them. The people who thrive here are those who embrace changes that let us build more for our customers; it’s a core part of our culture. Our Total Rewards Philosophy  We strive to provide competitive compensation and benefits programs that help to attract, retain, and motivate the best and brightest people in our industry. Our total rewards package goes beyond great earnings potential and provides the means to a healthy lifestyle with the flexibility to meet Toasters’ changing needs. Learn more about our benefits at https://careers.toasttab.com/toast-benefits. #LI-REMOTE The base salary range for this role is listed below. The starting salary will be determined based on skills, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, our total rewards components include cash compensation (overtime, bonus/commissions if eligible), equity, and benefits. You can learn more about how we align pay with local labor markets in our Geographic Pay Zone Philosophy. Zone A $193,000—$309,000 USD Zone B $168,000—$269,000 USD Zone C $151,000—$242,000 USD How Toast Uses AI in its Hiring Process Throughout the hiring process, our goal is to get to know you. We use AI tools to support our recruiters and interviewers with tasks like note-taking, summarization, and documentation of interviews to ensure they can be fully focused on your conversation. All hiring decisions are made by people. To learn more: https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring Our Approach to Hybrid Working We embrace a hybrid work model that fosters in-person collaboration while valuing individual needs. Our goal is to build a strong culture of connection as we work together to empower the hospitality community, regardless of location. Please visit the Locations page on our career site to learn more about our in-office expectations by region: https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is Baked into our Recipe for Success At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we thrive. The restaurant industry is one of the most diverse, and we embrace that diversity with authenticity, inclusivity, respect, and humility. By embedding these principles into our culture and design, we create equitable opportunities for all and raise the bar in delivering exceptional experiences. We Thrive Together We embrace a hybrid work model that fosters in-person collaboration while valuing individual needs. Our goal is to build a strong culture of connection as we work together to empower the restaurant community. To learn more about how we work globally and regionally, check out: https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast. Apply today! Toast is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive hiring process. As part of this commitment, we strive to provide reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities to enable them to access the hiring process. If you need an accommodation to access the job application or interview process, please contact candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com. ------ For roles in the United States, it is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

Toast

Toast creates technology to help restaurants and local businesses succeed in a digital world, helping business owners operate, increase sales, engage customers, and keep employees happy. As a Staff Data Scientist, you’ll lead the design and development of scalable ML systems for use cases such as menu recommendation, demand forecasting, offer targeting, and guest personalization. You will serve as a technical thought partner across teams, set best practices, and influence the roadmap for ML-driven products that support key business outcomes. Your work will directly shape strategic decisions and enhance customer experience at scale. A day in the life (Responsibilities) * Own the full machine learning lifecycle—from problem framing and data exploration to modeling, deployment, and monitoring—for mission-critical initiatives. * Design and implement advanced ML and statistical models that improve product performance, operational efficiency, or customer insights. * Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and business stakeholders to define project scope, success metrics, and integration strategy. * Guide architectural decisions, set modeling standards, and champion best practices for experimentation, validation, and productionization. * Mentor other data scientists and raise the technical bar through design reviews, feedback, and sharing domain expertise. * Proactively identify areas where data science can create business value and lead cross-functional efforts to drive those opportunities forward. * Leverage cutting edge AI tools to enhance your development workflow, improve velocity, and help pioneer new approaches to building - contributing to a culture of innovation and productivity across the team.   What you'll need to thrive (Requirements) * 7+ years of experience in data science with a proven track record of delivering production ML systems that drive measurable impact. * Deep knowledge of statistical modeling, machine learning (e.g., tree-based models, time series, deep learning), and model evaluation. * Experience working with real-world product data at scale and translating ambiguous problems into well-scoped ML solutions. * Experience with distributed data processing and training, real-time inference, and ML Ops frameworks * Prior experience mentoring other data scientists or acting as a tech lead. * Experience leading experimentation (e.g., A/B testing), causal inference, and real-time decision systems. * Proficiency in Python and SQL, and experience with ML frameworks (e.g., scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow). * Strong grasp of software engineering principles including modular design, version control, testing, and CI/CD. * Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (preferably AWS), including tools like SageMaker, Athena, Glue, DynamoDB, and Bedrock. * Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence both technical and non-technical stakeholders. * Strong business acumen with the ability to align technical solutions with company goals. * Experience building services on top of LLMs in a large scale production environment. Bonus ingredients*: * An advanced degree in Computer Science, Statistics, or a related STEM field is preferred. * Familiarity with MLOps tooling for monitoring, drift detection, retraining, and explainability. * Experience fine-tuning LLMs and applying reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) to improve model performance and alignment.   AI at Toast At Toast, one of our company values is that we're hungry to build and learn. We believe learning new AI tools empowers us to build for our customers faster, more independently, and with higher quality. We provide these tools across all disciplines, from Engineering and Product to Sales and Support, and are inspired by how our Toasters are already driving real value with them. The people who thrive here are those who embrace changes that let us build more for our customers; it’s a core part of our culture. Our Total Rewards Philosophy  We strive to provide competitive compensation and benefits programs that help to attract, retain, and motivate the best and brightest people in our industry. Our total rewards package goes beyond great earnings potential and provides the means to a healthy lifestyle with the flexibility to meet Toasters’ changing needs. Learn more about our benefits at https://careers.toasttab.com/toast-benefits. #LI-Remote The base salary range for this role is listed below. The starting salary will be determined based on skills, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, our total rewards components include cash compensation (overtime, bonus/commissions if eligible), equity, and benefits. You can learn more about how we align pay with local labor markets in our Geographic Pay Zone Philosophy. Zone A $170,000—$272,000 USD Zone B $148,000—$237,000 USD Zone C $133,000—$213,000 USD How Toast Uses AI in its Hiring Process Throughout the hiring process, our goal is to get to know you. We use AI tools to support our recruiters and interviewers with tasks like note-taking, summarization, and documentation of interviews to ensure they can be fully focused on your conversation. All hiring decisions are made by people. To learn more: https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring Our Approach to Hybrid Working We embrace a hybrid work model that fosters in-person collaboration while valuing individual needs. Our goal is to build a strong culture of connection as we work together to empower the hospitality community, regardless of location. Please visit the Locations page on our career site to learn more about our in-office expectations by region: https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is Baked into our Recipe for Success At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we thrive. The restaurant industry is one of the most diverse, and we embrace that diversity with authenticity, inclusivity, respect, and humility. By embedding these principles into our culture and design, we create equitable opportunities for all and raise the bar in delivering exceptional experiences. We Thrive Together We embrace a hybrid work model that fosters in-person collaboration while valuing individual needs. Our goal is to build a strong culture of connection as we work together to empower the restaurant community. To learn more about how we work globally and regionally, check out: https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast. Apply today! Toast is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive hiring process. As part of this commitment, we strive to provide reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities to enable them to access the hiring process. If you need an accommodation to access the job application or interview process, please contact candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com. ------ For roles in the United States, it is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

Toast

Toast creates technology to help restaurants and local businesses succeed in a digital world, helping business owners operate, increase sales, engage customers, and keep employees happy. The Android Systems team bridges the gap between hardware and software to build the foundational platform for Toast POS devices. The team develops the end-to-end software driving our device management product suite—including system applications, cloud-based services, and web user interfaces designed to secure and manage Toast's hardware ecosystem. We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer who is hands-on with coding, is able to design end to end systems, and will pave the path for the team to build modern technical solutions keeping customer empathy in mind. If you are a leader who collaborates well with teams within the organization, can think big, and are passionate about building software systems used to manage hardware devices with high focus on quality, this position is for you! ABOUT THIS ROLL* (RESPONSIBILITIES): * Hands-on design and implementation of Kotlin backend services to improve our device management workflows for customers. * Lead the design and development of the next generation of Toast’s software services and applications to bring a seamless device configuration and user experience for customers. * Collaborate with Product Management, Hardware, QA and other Software teams on the product roadmap and requirements to build a long term vision for Toast. * Create technical requirements and detailed designs of the software system being developed. * Lead effort estimation sessions and use sound judgment to enable planning of projects. * Diagnose performance bottlenecks and implement optimizations. * Make solid technical decisions keeping software quality, security, and maintainability in mind. * Help set the standard for software quality by adopting modern software test frameworks and practices in day to day development. DO YOU HAVE THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS*? (REQUIREMENTS): * 8+ years of experience in designing and implementing robust backend services * Proficient in a modern object-oriented programming language such as Java or Kotlin. * Demonstrated technical leadership, with the ability to drive cross-team alignment and influence across engineering, product, and business stakeholders. * Demonstrated experience with microservices architecture and containerization technologies for enhanced scalability and maintainability. * Applied knowledge of best practices in backend application lifecycle management, including database, service, & API design strategies, with the ability to share this amongst the team and peers. * Experience developing single-page frontend applications using React. * Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences. * Familiarity with AI-augmented development workflows and tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar). BONUS INGREDIENTS*: * Demonstrated proficiency with DynamoDB or PostgreSQL. * Proficiency in Kotlin (or Java and willing to learn Kotlin) and Kotlin-specific frameworks and libraries for building efficient backend solutions. * Experience with monitoring tools to debug and resolve tough customer issues. * Understanding of mobile device management (MDM) concepts and enterprise device management platforms.   AI at Toast At Toast, one of our company values is that we're hungry to build and learn. We believe learning new AI tools empowers us to build for our customers faster, more independently, and with higher quality. We provide these tools across all disciplines, from Engineering and Product to Sales and Support, and are inspired by how our Toasters are already driving real value with them. The people who thrive here are those who embrace changes that let us build more for our customers; it’s a core part of our culture.   Our Total Rewards Philosophy  We strive to provide competitive compensation and benefits programs that help to attract, retain, and motivate the best and brightest people in our industry. Our total rewards package goes beyond great earnings potential and provides the means to a healthy lifestyle with the flexibility to meet Toasters’ changing needs. Learn more about our benefits at https://careers.toasttab.com/toast-benefits. The base salary range for this role is listed below. The starting salary will be determined based on skills, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, our total rewards components include cash compensation (overtime, bonus/commissions if eligible), equity, and benefits. You can learn more about how we align pay with local labor markets in our Geographic Pay Zone Philosophy. Zone A $193,000—$309,000 USD Zone B $168,000—$269,000 USD Zone C $151,000—$242,000 USD How Toast Uses AI in its Hiring Process Throughout the hiring process, our goal is to get to know you. We use AI tools to support our recruiters and interviewers with tasks like note-taking, summarization, and documentation of interviews to ensure they can be fully focused on your conversation. All hiring decisions are made by people. To learn more: https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring Our Approach to Hybrid Working We embrace a hybrid work model that fosters in-person collaboration while valuing individual needs. Our goal is to build a strong culture of connection as we work together to empower the hospitality community, regardless of location. Please visit the Locations page on our career site to learn more about our in-office expectations by region: https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is Baked into our Recipe for Success At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we thrive. The restaurant industry is one of the most diverse, and we embrace that diversity with authenticity, inclusivity, respect, and humility. By embedding these principles into our culture and design, we create equitable opportunities for all and raise the bar in delivering exceptional experiences. We Thrive Together We embrace a hybrid work model that fosters in-person collaboration while valuing individual needs. Our goal is to build a strong culture of connection as we work together to empower the restaurant community. To learn more about how we work globally and regionally, check out: https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast. Apply today! Toast is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive hiring process. As part of this commitment, we strive to provide reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities to enable them to access the hiring process. If you need an accommodation to access the job application or interview process, please contact candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com. ------ For roles in the United States, it is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.