Staff Software Engineer, Catering & Events (Remote)

Toast; United States; Remote; USD 193,000 - 309,000; Full time

Job summary

Toast is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for Catering & Events, fully remote in the US. You will design and scale distributed backend services, mentor engineers, and drive architectural decisions across teams.

Collaboration with product and design is essential to deliver high-impact catering/workflow features while advancing observability and operational excellence. The role emphasizes leadership, speed, and customer impact, with a focus on AI-enhanced development and scalable architecture

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading the design and delivery of large-scale distributed systems in production environments.
• Strong backend expertise (Java or Kotlin preferred) with the ability to influence across the full stack when needed.
• Demonstrated ability to design scalable architectures and make high-quality tradeoffs across multiple systems/teams.
• Experience navigating ambiguity and driving alignment across stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions.
• Track record of technical leadership, including mentoring engineers and influencing engineering standards.
• Deep understanding of microservices architectures, system design, and operational considerations (performance, reliability, observability).
• Ability to decompose complex problems into clear strategies and guide teams through execution.
• Strong product and customer mindset, with a history of delivering solutions that create meaningful user and business impact.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.
• Experience leveraging AI-based tools or platforms to meaningfully increase engineering effectiveness and/or enable new product capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and delivery of complex, high-impact initiatives spanning multiple teams and systems, from concept to production.
• Own and evolve the architecture of critical systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
• Drive technical strategy within your domain, reducing complexity and improving engineering velocity.
• Partner with Product, Design, and cross-functional stakeholders to shape ambiguous issues into actionable solutions with measurable customer impact.
• Act as a technical leader and mentor, raising the bar for engineering excellence through reviews and hands-on collaboration.
• Establish and promote best practices for code quality, testing, observability, and operational excellence across services.
• Proactively identify and address system-wide risks, bottlenecks, and scaling challenges.
• Champion adoption of AI and emerging technologies to unlock new capabilities and drive innovation.

Skills

Distributed systems

Backend engineering

Java/Kotlin

Microservices

Technical leadership

Product mindset

Communication

AI tools

Job description

Toast is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for Catering & Events, fully remote in the US. You will design and scale distributed backend services, mentor engineers, and drive architectural decisions across teams.

Collaboration with product and design is essential to deliver high-impact catering/workflow features while advancing observability and operational excellence. The role emphasizes leadership, speed, and customer impact, with a focus on AI-enhanced development and scalable architecture