Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead

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.

Airbnb

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way. THE JOB: Airbnb Payments team allows any two people in the world to frictionlessly exchange money with easy to use payments services. It is a core strategy to fulfill Airbnb's belongs anywhere mission. We are building a world-class payments platform that moves billions of dollars, in 191 countries, with 75 currencies, through a complex ecosystem of payments partners. We build and maintain our own in-house global payments platform because no solution exists with the global reach needed. As the platform grows we'll be adding new payment partners, global licenses, compliance and regulation controls, and building new payment experiences for our guests and hosts. Airbnb's business grows rapidly year over year, and so does Airbnb Payments' processing volume. Payments Compliance is an essential part of the Payments organization. Without it, Airbnb can be subject to fines and even forbidden from conducting business in certain markets. As a Senior Staff Engineer and Technical Lead for the Payments Compliance organization, you would own the technical vision and architectural direction across the full Compliance engineering landscape — spanning Policy Enforcement, Identity, Screening, Auditing, and Compliance Experience. You will ensure our compliance systems are cohesive, scalable, and aligned with broader company priorities as we navigate an increasingly complex global regulatory environment. THE ROLE: We are looking for a seasoned technical leader who can operate at the intersection of deep systems expertise and organizational influence. As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will serve as the connective tissue across Compliance's multi-year strategic initiatives — defining how components fit together, identifying where capabilities can be shared rather than duplicated, and ensuring we leverage platform investments from partner teams. Your decisions will directly affect how Airbnb meets obligations such as Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC), and sanctions screening while minimizing operational cost and customer friction. This role extends well beyond the Compliance organization itself. You will partner directly with cross-organizational engineering teams, as well as cross-functional stakeholders across Product, Content, Legal, and Design. The technical choices you make carry direct financial and legal exposure — requiring the judgment, depth of expertise, and organizational credibility to drive high-stakes design tradeoffs across team boundaries. WHAT YOU WILL DO: * Own the end-to-end system design vision for the Compliance organization, setting the architectural direction for an engineering organization of nearly 30 engineers across multiple teams. * Drive foundational architectural shifts, including the move from an account-centric model to a customer-centric one — rethinking how we model identity, risk, and enforcement across the platform. * Lead the technical strategy for expanding KYC capabilities — supporting small and medium businesses, reimagining business onboarding and account structures, enabling KYC through third-party APIs, and extending verification to third-party payees. * Architect systems that adapt to the evolving digital identity landscape — including new verification standards, government-issued digital credentials, and shifting privacy regulations — without requiring costly re-platforming. * Ensure our technical foundations are flexible enough to absorb unforeseen regulatory mandates with aggressive timelines, without destabilizing existing systems or requiring disproportionate engineering investment. * Partner with technical leaders across multiple organizations to drive alignment on shared capabilities and cohesive system design, reducing duplication and compounding technical debt. * Work closely with Product, Design, Policy, Legal, Operations, and other cross-functional partners as part of a globally distributed team to define and ship impactful features. * Lead and mentor engineers — both inside and outside your immediate team — raising the technical bar and developing the next generation of technical leaders within Compliance. * Advocate for and drive systemic improvements by identifying patterns to streamline development, reduce toil, and increase technical quality and operational excellence over time. ABOUT YOU: * 15+ years of technical experience, with 10+ years of relevant industry experience in a fast-paced tech environment. * Prior knowledge of Regulatory Compliance standards (AML, KYC, sanctions screening) and demonstrated experience designing and implementing those controls at scale. * Proven track record of setting technical direction and architectural strategy for a large engineering organization, with the ability to drive alignment across organizational boundaries. * Experience designing systems that span multiple teams and domains, with a focus on cohesion, reusability, and long-term maintainability over initiative-by-initiative solutions. * Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence senior technical and non-technical stakeholders across the company. * Strong problem solver with deep experience operating and leading on-call for production systems at scale. * Technical leadership: hands-on experience leading large project teams, making high-stakes design tradeoffs, and translating regulatory requirements into scalable system architectures. * BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent work experience. * Proficiency in one or more back-end server languages (Java/Ruby/Go/C++/etc.) * Deep understanding of architectural patterns of high-scale web and data applications. * Be future looking — we might be focused on immediate regulations, but need to build for the long term. You think in terms of platforms, not projects. * End-to-end ownership mentality that transcends team boundaries, with the credibility and judgment to make decisions that carry direct financial and legal implications. Your Location: This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list . If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from. Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging: Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply. We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: reasonableaccommodations@airbnb.com. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process.  We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application. How We'll Take Care of You: Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.   Pay Range $244,000—$305,000 USD

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.