Staff Software Engineer, Application Infrastructure

• 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.
• Now, more than ever, the Toast team is committed to our customers.
• We're taking steps to help restaurants navigate these unprecedented times with technology, resources, and community.
• Our focus is on building the restaurant platform that helps restaurants adapt, take control, and get back to what they do best: building the businesses they love.
• And because our technology is purpose-built for restaurants, by restaurant people, restaurants can trust that we'll deliver on their needs for today while investing in experiences that will power their restaurant in the future.
• Are you bready* for a change?
• We are looking for an experienced software engineer to play a critical role in further scaling and developing Toast's cloud platform and infrastructure.
• Toast's platform processes billions of requests per day from hundreds of internal services and hundreds of thousands of mobile devices; these numbers grow exponentially year over year as we add new restaurants and capabilities to the platform.
• Our team is responsible for developing secure, observable, highly available, large-scale shared services and infrastructure.

About this roll * (Responsibilities)

• Architect, design, and deliver ultra-reliable, high-performance services and infrastructure used by millions
• Uncover and resolve performance bottlenecks across infrastructure, databases, and APIs
• Define and enable adherence to engineering best practices, coding standards, and architectural guidelines
• Collaborate closely with the Product team to influence features, technical direction, and long-term product vision

Do you have the right ingredients* (Requirements)?

• Hands-on experience building and operating complex, mission-critical, large-scale distributed systems in the Cloud
• Expertise in asynchronous messaging, event-driven architecture, APIs, and integration patterns
• Track record of delivering clean, maintainable, and resilient code that stands the test of time
• Proficiency in Java or Kotlin preferred (experience in other modern programming languages also valued)
• Exceptional communication and collaboration skills, with demonstrated ability to align and inspire cross-functional teams
• A demonstrated record of mentoring junior team members and enhancing the team's effectiveness

Tech Stack

• Our team builds and operates on a modern, cloud-native stack with heavy use of AWS, developing services and shared libraries in Kotlin and Go backed by PostgreSQL and DynamoDB.
• Infrastructure is provisioned and managed with Terraform.
• We oversee Toast's sharded PostgreSQL databases, own and drive the organization's use of Apache Pulsar to enable event-driven architecture at scale, and provide developers with tools and services to easily schedule recurring jobs.
• Our systems also power customer engagement, integrating with SMS and email providers to reliably deliver millions of messages per day.
• We embrace AI-driven software development at Toast across the lifecycle from design and implementation to testing and production monitoring.

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 .
• Bread* puns encouraged but not required!
• 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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