Staff Software Engineer

Toast; Chennai; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Toast is seeking a Staff Engineer to own the backend for Catalog and Inventory, delivering scalable services and APIs. You will spend most of your time coding, reviewing, and mentoring, shaping architecture across multiple teams, and partnering with Product Managers and UX Designers.

You will work on Java, Kotlin, DynamoDB, Pulsar, GraphQL, and Big Data tools, leveraging AI tools to improve developer productivity and product quality.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience designing and delivering scalable backend systems.
• Hands-on coding and code review responsibility across multiple teams.
• Technical ownership of complex projects as domain expert.
• Experience building distributed, event-driven architectures and microservices.
• Design flexible systems that absorb changing requirements without rewrites.
• Solid data architecture experience; knowledge of Postgres and DynamoDB.
• Hands-on experience with AWS cloud platforms.
• Strong testing and CI/CD practices, production support.
• Excellent communication and collaboration in Agile/Scrum environments.
• Customer-first mindset with mentoring and inclusive leadership.

Responsibilities

• Write production code as your primary contribution and lead code reviews.
• Conceive and lead design and execution of high-impact catalog/inventory initiatives across teams.
• Enable the team to measure, maintain and improve customer experience across requirements.
• Anticipate changes by designing flexible, scalable systems for evolving needs.
• Design solutions across multiple domains and drive alignment while reducing complexity.
• Mentor engineers and foster an inclusive growth environment.
• Collaborate with Product and UX to translate roadmaps into scalable services.
• Build using Java, Kotlin, DynamoDB, Pulsar, GraphQL and Big Data tools; explore AI-assisted workflows.

Skills

Backend design

Distributed systems

Java/Kotlin/Scala

AWS

DynamoDB

GraphQL

Postgres

Microservices

Code review

Mentoring

Tools

DynamoDB

Pulsar

GraphQL

Big Data tools

Java

Kotlin

Scala

Postgres

AWS

Job description

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.

As a Staff Engineer on the Catalog and Inventory team you will deliver significant products and core capabilities across teams, building the backend systems behind what our customers sell and stock. This is a hands-on role: most of your time is spent writing and reviewing code. You will be a domain expert in the product area, mentoring team members and enhancing the team’s effectiveness, and you will partner with Product Managers and UX Designers to turn roadmap goals into scalable services.

If you enjoy owning hard backend problems, care about the quality of what you ship, and are a great collaborator, read on!

A Day In The Life (Responsibilities)

• Write production code as your primary contribution, and hold the code review bar for the team.
• Conceive and lead the design and execution of efforts with broad customer impact on Toast’s catalog and inventory platform, across multiple teams as necessary.
• Enable your team to consistently measure, maintain and improve the customer experience across functional and non-functional requirements.
• Anticipate changes in technical and product requirements by designing flexible systems, engaging the problem space fully before committing to a solution.
• Design solutions that factor considerations across multiple technical domains, drive alignment across teams, and actively reduce execution complexity.
• Create an environment conducive to growth by modelling humility and inclusiveness and mentoring engineers.
• Foster collaboration beyond your immediate line of business, demonstrating the Toast-wide benefit of your work and securing stakeholder buy-in at multiple levels.
• Design and build using Java, Kotlin, DynamoDB, Pulsar, GraphQL, Big Data tools, and more.
• Leverage cutting edge AI tools to enhance your development workflow, improve velocity, and help pioneer new approaches to building - contributing to a culture of innovation and productivity across the team.

What You'll Need To Thrive (Requirements)

• 8+ years of experience designing and delivering scalable backend systems.
• Deep, current hands-on coding ability — you will review other engineers’ code and be expected to catch what they miss.
• Proven technical ownership of complex projects delivered across more than one team, as the domain expert others rely on.
• Strong experience building distributed, event-driven architectures and microservices in Java, Kotlin, Scala, or similar OOP languages.
• Experience designing flexible systems that absorb changing requirements without a rewrite.
• Solid understanding of data architecture and schema design, and strong knowledge of modern database systems (Postgres, DynamoDB).
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms like AWS.
• Strong experience with automated testing and continuous delivery, and a habit of supporting what you ship in production.
• Excellent communication skills, able to demonstrate the value of technical work beyond Engineering.
• Experience working in an Agile/Scrum environment, delivering value continuously.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills; able to break down complexity and drive solutions that scale.
• A passion for building impactful products with a customer-first mindset.
• Strong interpersonal and mentoring skills—respectful, empathetic, humble, and inclusive.
• Comfortable using AI-powered engineering tools to improve developer productivity, code quality, and technical decision-making, with the ability to critically evaluate and validate AI-generated solutions.

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. 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.

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 [e-mail].

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.