Staff Software Engineer, Catering & Events

Who We Are

• 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.
• Are you bready* for a change? (team info)
• 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.

About this roll * (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

Do you have the right ingredients* ? (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

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.
• 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.

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 [email protected] .

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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.