Staff Software Engineer

Toast

3d•$151,000 - $309,000•Remote

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. Our Catering & Events team is expanding Toast’s reach into an exciting and growing space: helping restaurants, caterers and venues manage everything from office catering to large-scale events. Whether it’s a wedding, a corporate lunch, or a holiday catering rush, our software powers the experiences that matter most to our customers and their guests. As a Staff Software Engineer on the Catering & Events team, you’ll help build and evolve a product that enables customers to manage complex catering and event workflows with ease. You’ll work across the stack to deliver high-impact features that reach real customers quickly. This is a highly collaborative role where you’ll partner closely with product managers and designers to bring ideas to life. You’ll thrive here if you enjoy moving fast, learning from customers, and iterating on products in a tight feedback loop.

Requirements

Proven experience leading the design and delivery of large-scale, distributed systems in production environments
Strong backend expertise (Java or Kotlin preferred) with the ability to influence and contribute across the full stack when needed
Demonstrated ability to design scalable architectures and make high-quality technical tradeoffs across multiple systems and teams
Experience navigating ambiguity and driving alignment across stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions
Track record of technical leadership, including mentoring engineers and influencing engineering standards and practices
Deep understanding of microservices architectures, system design, and operational considerations (performance, reliability, observability)
Ability to decompose complex problems into clear strategies and guide teams through execution
Strong product and customer mindset, with a history of delivering solutions that create meaningful user and business impact
Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence across organizational boundaries
Experience leveraging AI-based tools or platforms to meaningfully increase engineering effectiveness and/or enable new product capabilities

Responsibilities

Lead the design and delivery of complex, high-impact initiatives that span multiple teams and systems, from concept through production, balancing short-term delivery with long-term system health
Own and evolve the architecture of critical systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, and long-term maintainability
Drive technical strategy within your domain, identifying opportunities to simplify systems, reduce complexity, and improve engineering velocity
Partner with Product, Design, and cross-functional stakeholders to shape ambiguous problem spaces into clear, actionable solutions with measurable customer impact
Act as a technical leader and mentor, raising the bar for engineering excellence through guidance, design reviews, and hands-on collaboration
Establish and promote best practices for code quality, testing, observability, and operational excellence across services
Proactively identify and address system-wide risks, performance bottlenecks, and scaling challenges
Champion the adoption of AI and emerging technologies to unlock new capabilities, improve developer productivity, and drive innovation across the organization