Product Lead, Toast Partner Ecosystem

Toast•Boston, MA

About The Position

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 the Product Lead for Partner Ecosystem, you will define and execute Toast’s partner ecosystem strategy. This is a highly strategic, senior IC role responsible for crafting the platform vision, formalizing our governance and monetization models, and driving cross-functional execution across R&D, DevRel, BD, Legal, and GTM teams. You will shape how partners build on Toast, how we create mutually beneficial integrations, and how we unlock new value for customers in an AI-accelerating world. This role is ideal for a product leader who thrives in complex platform ecosystems, has deep experience building developer programs or partner marketplaces, understands data governance and AI-driven competitive dynamics, and excels at balancing openness with control. You will work directly with senior executives to make foundational decisions about the future of Toast’s ecosystem.

Requirements

10+ years of product management experience with deep expertise in platform ecosystems, developer programs, or marketplace products.
Proven success defining strategy and shipping products that involve APIs, partner integrations, or complex multi-stakeholder environments.
Experience designing governance frameworks—especially around data access, permissions, AI constraints, monetization, or contractual controls.
Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives without direct authority, influencing executives and technical leaders to drive alignment.
Strong strategic and analytical skills, with experience building multi-year product visions and detailed economic models.
A customer-centric mindset with deep empathy for developers, partners, and operators who depend on integrations to run their businesses.
Experience with SaaS platforms in commerce, fintech, marketplaces, or AI-driven systems.
Familiarity with restaurant, retail, or hospitality technology landscapes.
Background working with BD teams, legal teams, and AI/ML product surfaces.
Experience in high-scale environments, highly competitive platform environments

Responsibilities

Own Toast’s partner ecosystem product strategy, including governance guardrails for data access, write permissions, AI model protections, and monetization tiers.
Build and maintain the long-term product vision for developer experience, Toast’s Partner Marketplace, APIs and API reporting / logging tools, sandbox environments, and developer tooling that enables self-service onboarding and scalable throughput.
Translate the partner ecosystem strategy into a multi-year roadmap aligned with Toast’s broader product and business goals.
Prioritize investments that unlock partner throughput—from test environments to developer tooling to credentialing systems—while sequencing delivery to maximize revenue upside.
Partner closely with R&D leadership (Infra, DevRel, Data, AI) to scope, resource, and execute core platform capabilities.
Work with Business Development to define the overall commercialization and governance models, integration categories, partner tiers, and high-value segments
Collaborate with Legal and Privacy to operationalize new API terms of service, AI restrictions, and data protection frameworks.
Ensure GTM teams (Partner Marketing, Support, Customer Success) have clarity on partner programs, benefits, and economic models.
Define monetization frameworks across API access fees, per-location scale fees, revenue share, and premium partner tiers—ensuring that partner success increases ARPU and profitability.
Partner with BD and Corporate Development to create new processes for driving clarity on which capabilities Toast should build, buy, or partner for—including identifying when partners become M&A candidates through traction and ecosystem signal.
Represent the ecosystem vision internally with senior leadership and externally with partners, customers, and the broader industry.