Senior Software Engineer

About the job

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 New Ventures team explores new opportunities and builds products that address meaningful customer needs. We work in a small, collaborative team, partnering across Toast to move quickly from ideas to working software and learn from customer feedback. We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help build a new AI-powered product. In this role, you will design, build, and own backend services, integrations, and product capabilities. You will work closely with engineering, Product, and Design to turn evolving requirements into reliable, maintainable software, using AI-assisted development as an integral part of your work.

A day in the life (Responsibilities)

- Design, build, and own backend services and APIs that support new product capabilities.

- Build and maintain integrations across Toast’s internal services and external systems.

- Develop LLM-powered features, including connecting models to tools and APIs and handling unexpected outputs or failures.

- Write automated tests and contribute evaluation cases that verify AI-powered features complete their intended tasks and continue to work as the product evolves.

- Use AI-assisted development tools extensively for implementation, testing, debugging, and refactoring, while reviewing and validating the resulting changes.

- Participate in code reviews, monitor feature rollouts, respond to incidents, and iterate based on performance data and customer feedback.

- Partner with Product, Design, and teams across Toast to clarify requirements, resolve dependencies, and deliver on shared goals.

- Take ownership of substantial features from technical design through production, adapting your approach as the team learns.

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

- 5+ years of experience delivering production backend systems.

- Proficiency in Typescript / Java, Kotlin, or another object-oriented language, with strong software design, testing, and debugging skills.

- Familiarity with API lifecycle management, including versioning, documentation, and deprecation.

- Hands-on experience building with LLMs in production environments.

- Demonstrated proficiency using AI coding assistants and coding agents in everyday engineering work, including breaking down tasks, providing useful context, and validating generated code.

- Strong understanding of query languages, data modeling, and data distribution.

- Experience working with microservices and event-driven architectures.

- Ability to independently deliver software in an environment with evolving requirements and collaborate effectively across teams.

What will help you stand out (Nice to Have)

- Experience building early-stage products and scaling them as customer adoption and usage grow.

- Experience designing and building GraphQL APIs.

- Experience building LLM-powered agents, including tool use and multi-step workflows.

- Experience creating evaluations for AI-powered features and using them to investigate failures or measure improvements.

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-HYBRID 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. We ask that you complete interviews and assessments on your own, without real-time AI tools, recording, or transcription bots, unless we tell you otherwise in advance. 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

People Are the Secret Ingredient in Our Recipe for Success

At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we thrive. The restaurant industry brings together people with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, and we value that same breadth at Toast. We strive to build a culture grounded in authenticity, respect, and humility, where every Toaster has a real opportunity to grow, contribute, and do their best work—raising the bar in delivering exceptional experiences for our customers and each other.

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 .

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