Engineering Lead, New Ventures

Toast

18h • $180,000 - $368,000

About The Position

Toast is seeking an Engineering Lead for its New Ventures team to help build a new product from 0 to 1. The role leads a team of four experienced engineers as a hands-on player/coach, driving engineering velocity, solving problems directly, and fostering rapid iteration and technical excellence. The Engineering Lead works closely with the Product Lead on weekly priorities and product discovery, stays close to customers, and contributes directly to code, bug fixes, and customer issue triage.

The role also shapes the technical strategy and architecture for the product, establishes lightweight shared norms and guardrails, and coordinates with engineering and platform teams across Toast when dependencies arise. The team is encouraged to explore modern tools and new ways of working to deliver customer value quickly while maintaining quality and long-term viability.

Requirements

• Proven experience taking a product from concept through an initial MVP and beyond.
• A player/coach mentality and technical depth to work with senior individual contributors, review designs and code, and contribute directly.
• Experience managing or leading small, high-leverage engineering teams in a lean environment.
• Strong customer empathy and a record of fixing bugs or triaging issues based on direct customer feedback.
• Experience finding new ways to build teams and products and leveraging modern tools to ship faster and smarter.
• Experience defining lightweight engineering norms and guardrails that optimize for speed and impact.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, especially with Product Leads, to weigh tradeoffs and define weekly priorities.
• Self-directed, low-ego approach and comfort working without perfect clarity.
• Experience building with LLMs or shipping AI-powered product experiences.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in operationally complex industries.
• Founder or early-startup experience, or experience on an internal incubation or new ventures team.

Responsibilities

• Lead, unblock, and collaborate with a team of four experienced senior engineers, fostering rapid iteration and technical excellence.
• Work as a player/coach by writing code, fixing bugs, and triaging customer issues.
• Partner with the Product Lead on weekly sprints and technical tradeoffs to determine priorities.
• Integrate modern tools into daily development processes and help the team develop new ways of working.
• Establish shared engineering norms, guardrails, and best practices that support speed and quality.
• Coordinate technical collaboration with other engineering and platform groups to address cross-team dependencies.
• Participate in customer feedback sessions and directly address customer pain points.
• Partner with senior engineers to shape product technical strategy and architecture, balancing speed to market with long-term viability.

Benefits

• Equity.
• Benefits intended to support a healthy lifestyle and flexibility for employees' changing needs.
• Cash compensation components such as overtime and bonus or commissions, if eligible.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed