Staff Software Engineer- Backend

United States Digital Space LLC; Dublin; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Toast, Inc. seeks a Staff Software Engineer to join our Payments team, building the next generation of payment processing with agentic capabilities.

You will guide backend design, scale services, and collaborate across product and UX to deliver features that power payments for restaurants and merchants. The role embraces a hybrid working model, values diverse backgrounds, and delivers cutting-edge, secure APIs.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing and implementing robust backend services.
• Interest in agentic development and coding agents.
• Ability to lead and mentor engineers on architecture and best practices.
• Design scalable, secure APIs integrating multiple systems.
• Experience with microservices and containerization.

Responsibilities

• Plan, design, build, and deliver payments features.
• Roll features out to customers with monitoring for success.
• Collaborate with PM and UX on feature design.
• Partner with teams across the company to share knowledge.
• Design and implement end-to-end agent solutions and improve life cycles.
• Advocate for spec-driven, agentic development practices.
• Lead design and code reviews with experienced engineers.

Skills

Backend design

API design

Microservices

Containerization

Technical leadership

Payments domain

Agentic development

Security

Tools

DynamoDB

PostgreSQL

Kotlin

Java

Job description

the company 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 the company operates one of the most critical portions of the the company 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 the company’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 the company’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 the company 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 the company

At the company, 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 athttps://careers.toasttab.com/the company-benefits.

How the company 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-the company

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

At the company, 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-the company.

the company is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive