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.

We’re not your traditional tech company and we don’t aim to be. Going against the grain is in our DNA. Building a revolutionary product begins with revolutionary thinking. That’s why we value diversity of background and lived experience. Together, we empower restaurants of all sizes to build great teams, increase revenue, improve operations, and delight their guests. We pair our deep understanding of the restaurant industry with powerful cloud based software and restaurant-grade hardware to deliver an intuitive all-in-one platform. Join us on our mission to empower the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love, and thrive.

Fintech at Toast operates one of the most critical portions of the Toast infrastructure: processing payments on behalf of our restaurants and ensuring that restaurants are paid in a timely manner. Payment processing is a key source of Toast’s revenue and also the lifeblood of our customers; we process millions of dollars in transactions per day.

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join our Payments team to build our next generation payment processing platform by combining deep payments expertise with experience building AI agents and agentic systems. This platform offers a single, integrated service for payment acceptance across various channels and supports a configurable enterprise approach. It is designed to allow a build-once, available-to-all strategy for both existing and emerging payment methods. The successful candidate will guide and contribute to the development of services providing supporting and core functionality within and around this payment processing solution.

A day in the life (Responsibilities)

Plan, design, build, and deliver features for Toast’s payments products
Roll - pun intended! - features out to customers, including monitoring for success
Collaborate with our PM (and UX) on the definition and design of features
Collaborate and partner with a wide array of teams across Toast in order to spread knowledge inter- and intra-team
Participate in designing, estimating, implementing, testing, and debugging end-to-end agent solutions
Adopt and advocate for bleeding-edge spec-driven development and agentic development practices
Champion best practices for agent development, deployment, and quality life cycles
Lead and work with experienced engineers to deliver design and code review

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

8+ years of experience in designing and implementing robust backend services
Experience or strong interest in using coding agents and adopting agentic development practices
Ability to step into a technical leadership role on the team, guiding/coaching/mentor more junior engineers on best practices in architecture, design, coding, testing, deployment, etc.
Proven ability to design and develop scalable and secure APIs that integrate with various internal/external systems
Applied knowledge of best practices in API lifecycle management, including versioning, documentation, and deprecation strategies, with the ability to share this amongst the team and peers
Demonstrated experience with microservices architecture and containerization technologies for enhanced scalability and maintainability

Special Sauce (*Nice to Haves)

Experience designing agentic products
Demonstrated proficiency with DynamoDB or PostgreSQL
Proficiency in Kotlin (or Java and willing to learn Kotlin) and Kotlin-specific frameworks and libraries for building efficient backend solutions
Experience with modern data architectures (event sourcing, OLAP, ETL/ELT, streaming data)
Experience designing payments APIs
Familiarity with PCI-DSS
Familiarity with AI-augmented development workflows and tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, or similar)

#LI-HYBRID
#BI-Hybrid

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.

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. 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

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is Baked into our Recipe for Success

At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we thrive. The restaurant industry is one of the most diverse, and we embrace that diversity with authenticity, inclusivity, respect, and humility. By embedding these principles into our culture and design, we create equitable opportunities for all and raise the bar in delivering exceptional experiences.

We Thrive Together

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 restaurant community. To learn more about how we work globally and regionally, check out: https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast.

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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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.

Staff Software Engineer- Backend

Job Description