Principal Software Engineer

Toast; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 368,000; Full time

Job summary

Toast is building technology to help restaurants and local businesses succeed in a digital world, enabling owners to operate, increase sales, engage guests, and keep teams happy. As a Principal Engineer, you will lead architectural design, technical execution, and implementation across Toast’s Team Suite products, Payroll and Team Management.

The role focuses on scalable, secure multi-tenant SaaS and agentic workflows.

Qualifications

• Strong technologist with experience building high-scale SaaS solutions.
• Deep experience with identity and access architecture in multi-tenant SaaS.
• Experience with Toast tech stack: tiered web apps, microservices, mobile, API design.

Responsibilities

• Lead developers, PMs, designers to build strong tech infra for features.
• Own architecture for authentication, authorization, and org hierarchy across the org.
• Transform a traditional SaaS platform into an agentic, system-of-action.
• Drive large end-to-end initiatives and core architecture changes in a collaborative team.
• Define and drive technical strategy for cross-business problems.
• Mentor teams through code reviews and architecture discussions.
• Champion best practices for development, deployment, and lifecycle.
• Leverage AI tools to improve velocity and innovate in development.

Skills

SaaS architecture

Identity access

Tech stack: Java/Kotlin/React

Agentic development

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. We help restaurants streamline operations, increase revenue, and deliver amazing guest experiences through our platform that combines restaurant point of sale, team management, guest-facing technology, and award-winning customer support. As a Toaster, you will be challenged to take on meaningful projects to help craft the company's future. Join us as we empower the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love, and thrive.

Your mission is to lead the architectural design, technical execution, and implementation across the foundational domains of Toast’s Team Suite products, Payroll and Team Management. The Payroll product delivers daily value to its users - enabling restaurant owners to pay their staff and pay their taxes, and enabling transparency for wages and tips for restaurant employees. The Team Management suite allows restaurants to hire, manage, and schedule their staff.

As a Principal Engineer, you will serve as a key technical leader in the group, driving modern architectural patterns—including spec-driven development and agentic workflows to deliver high-impact software.

A Day In The Life (Responsibilities)

• Lead fellow developers, product managers, designers, and user researchers to build a strong tech infrastructure that enables amazing features
• Own the architecture for authentication, authorization, and organizational hierarchy — driving technical direction in these domains across the organization
• Help us transform a traditional SasS platform into an agentic, system-of-action
• Flex your full-stack muscles by driving challenging large end-to-end initiatives or core architecture changes in a supportive, collaborative team environment
• Define and drive technical strategy for problems that affect multiple parts of the business
• Mentor developers across multiple teams through code-pairing and detailed code, architecture, and project reviews
• Champion best practices for development, deployment and quality life cycles
• 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)

• Strong technologist with extensive experience defining and implementing high scale SaaS solutions.
• Deep experience with identity and access architecture — authentication, permissions models, and multi-entity organizational hierarchy — in a multi-tenant SaaS platform.
• Experience with a broad set of technologies that includes those used at Toast - tiered web applications, microservices, mobile, API design patterns, Java, Kotlin, React, data analytics.
• Strong enthusiasm for agentic development practices, LLM integration, and modern software paradigms.
• Experience with integration design patterns across high-scale, data-rich enterprise systems.
• A proven track record of building partnerships across engineering, product, customer success, and other stakeholders.
• Experience and interest in mentoring peers
• Experience maintaining a high bar for quality, and guiding teams to hold a high bar for the technical quality of their deliverables.
• Hungry to take on challenging technical projects

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
$230,000—$368,000 USD

Zone B
$200,000—$320,000 USD

Zone C
$180,000—$288,000 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. 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.