Staff Software Engineer, Backend

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 Care & Onboarding team builds and maintains the tools that enable the core workflows of our Customer Care Agents, Onboarding Consultants, and the broader Toast team. Our work directly impacts how Toast supports its restaurant customers at every stage of their journey. We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to serve as a technical leader within our squad and help shape the future of how these teams operate. In this role, you will drive the architectural direction of our systems, deliver high-impact solutions across products, and elevate the engineers around you. You will be a domain expert who partners with technical and non-technical stakeholders to define and execute on the highest-leverage opportunities for the team. This is a role for an engineer who is equally comfortable writing code, leading technical design, and influencing decisions across the organization. Your work will contribute to a strong technical foundation that will carry Toast through the next decade and beyond. A day in the life (Responsibilities) * Own the technical direction of the Care & Onboarding platforms, driving architectural decisions that improve scalability, reliability, and maintainability * Lead design and delivery of large-scope initiatives from conception through production, coordinating across teams and stakeholders * Identify and resolve systemic technical challenges, including complexity, operational toil, and cross-team dependencies * Set and maintain a high bar for engineering quality through hands-on code contributions, design reviews, and mentorship * Partner with product, design, and operations leadership to translate business strategy into technical plans * Leverage AI-augmented development tools to increase development velocity and code quality What you'll need to thrive (Requirements) * 8+ years delivering complex backend systems at scale * Mastery of Java, Kotlin, or another object-oriented language * Deep proficiency in API lifecycle management, including versioning, documentation, and deprecation * Strong understanding of query languages, data modeling, and data distribution * Demonstrated technical leadership, with the ability to drive cross-team alignment and influence across engineering, product, and business stakeholders * Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience What will help you stand out (Nonessential Skills/Nice to Haves) * Hands-on experience building with LLMs in production environments * Familiarity with Workato or a similar iPaaS platform * Prior work with Salesforce or other CRM platforms * Comfort working with React and GraphQL 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.

Toast

At Toast, we are committed to empowering our customers by providing the technology, resources, and community they need to thrive. While our roots are in food service, we are rapidly expanding into adjacent markets and international territories. Our mission is to build a world-class publishing and configuration platform that supports the diverse needs of all Toast customers, regardless of their industry or location. As a member of the Config Platform team, you will be at the heart of Toast’s most critical infrastructure. We are the high-concurrency engine powering live system updates across the entire Toast ecosystem. Whether it’s a menu change in Ireland or a pricing update for a 100 location enterprise, it all flows through our systems. We empower our customers with the ability to transform their operations in real-time with consistency and reliability  Why this team? * Scale and Resiliency: We are the highest-trafficked service at Toast. Our platform is mission-critical to core operations like ordering and business management; if we aren't performing, the business stops. * Expanding the Vision: We are advancing a sophisticated change management vision. We give customers the confidence and precision tools they need to manage complex configurations and run their global businesses with ease. * Platform Enablement: Beyond serving end-users, we are an ever-evolving internal platform. We aim to empower other Toast engineering teams to build, deploy, and scale their own features quickly on top of our robust architecture. * Future-Proofing: As our customer base grows at a phenomenal rate, we are re-architecting our infrastructure to handle increasing technical complexity and global scale. About this roll* (Responsibilities)  * Design, build, deploy, and maintain highly resilient and scalable systems that are critical to our customers’ success * Lead complex projects that span multiple teams to improve functionality and reliability for our customers * Design solutions that anticipate and accommodate future needs while considering tradeoffs * Effectively communicate technical direction, guide our team through execution while driving team quality practices * Act as a force multiplier in improving engineering productivity * Diagnose performance bottlenecks and implement optimizations Do you have the right ingredients*? (Requirements) * Approach your work with humility, empathy, and deep respect for your peers * Articulate sophisticated project roadmaps and empower engineering cohorts to drive them toward fruition * Proven track record of delivering and operating mission-critical production services at scale * Maintain end-to-end ownership over high-throughput systems while navigating the complexities of distributed architecture * Embody a growth-oriented mindset focused on continuous elevation of your craft and domain * Establish yourself as a trusted technical authority capable of making decisions that secure both immediate wins and long-term strategic goals Our Tech Stack Our products run on a stack that ranges from guest and restaurant-facing Android tablets, to backend Kotlin and Java services, to internal, guest-facing, and restaurant-facing web apps. Our backend services follow a microservice architecture written using Kotlin/Java and DropWizard; we use AWS extensively, ranging from DynamoDB to RDS to Lambda. We have our own platform for dealing with user management, canary deployments, and robust load balancing. We store data in a set of sharded Postgres databases and utilize Apache Spark for large scale data workloads including query and batch processing. The web front-end is built using React and ES6. Our main point of sale application is an Android application written in Java and Kotlin. For data between tablets and our cloud platform, we rely on Pulsar event driven architecture along with some RabbitMQ clusters as well as direct tablet communication to the back end. 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.

Toast

Location(s): US (remote), Boston (hybrid), or New York (hybrid)   Bready* to make a change? Now, more than ever, the Toast team is committed to our customers. Our focus is on building the restaurant platform that helps restaurants adapt, take control, and get back to what they do best: building the businesses they love. And because our technology is purpose-built for restaurants, by restaurant people, restaurants can trust that we’ll deliver on their needs for today while investing in experiences that will power their restaurant of the future. Who We Are The Websites team is responsible for advancing and supporting Toast’s website design and hosting product, as well as working closely with the integrated Online Ordering product/team. This group is highly product oriented, with a laser-focus on creating top tier consumer experiences for restaurants and their guests. Our product-line is relatively new but already used by millions of restaurant goers each day, so be prepared to innovate on products at a huge scale while ensuring stability and scalability. About this roll* (Responsibilities) In this role, you'll get to work on a wide variety of projects, using your technical chops to influence not just the code, but also product and business strategies. This is a golden opportunity for a hands-on, entrepreneurial engineer who thrives in a modern tech stack environment and loves solving real-world problems through technology. You’ll run experiments, iterate quickly, and have a strong voice in shaping the future of online ordering and Websites here at Toast.  Here’s what you’ll be doing: * Design, scope, and implement cutting-edge solutions using a mix of technologies. * Raise the bar to boost quality, performance, usability, and scalability of the Websites product. * Collaborate closely with Design and Product stakeholders to chase product-market fit. * Drive discovery of high-impact opportunities with your team and turn them into reality. * Be an awesome teammate who’s all in on collaboration and collective success. * Work across teams to ensure that every part of our product ecosystem works seamlessly together to deliver the best possible experience for our customers.   Do you have the right ingredients*? (Requirements) * 8+ years of experience developing fullstack web applications * Proficient in backend technologies like Java/Kotlin and Node.JS. * Skilled with frontend frameworks like React or Angular, and CSS frameworks like Tailwind or Bootstrap. * Experienced in building on AWS, with tools like Docker and Git. * Comfortable turning high-fidelity UX designs from Figma into reality. * Adept at designing databases and architectures that scale and perform well. * Passionate about writing testable code, with experience in API design and unit/integration testing. * Thrive in a collaborative, team-based environment where you ship features together. * Passionate about making users happy and seeing people use your product in the wild. * Embrace the agile mindset—ship quickly, iterate, and refine. * Harness AI to supercharge your output and push the boundaries of what our product can do. 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.