Principal Software Engineer - POS Innovation

Toast is driven by building the restaurant platform that helps restaurants adapt, take control, and get back to what they do best: building the businesses they love.

Toast sits at the intersection of hospitality and data. Every order placed, dish served, and table turned generates insights that can unlock smarter operations and more personalized guest experiences. By connecting these data points with real-time AI, Toast has a unique opportunity to help restaurants run more efficiently, empower their teams, and deliver hospitality that adapts to each guest’s needs.

As Principal Software Engineer for POS Innovation, you’ll be a key technical leader in bringing this vision to life. You’ll define and build the systems that connect in-restaurant operations with real-time data through LLMs, AI agents, voice and even video. Your work will drive better service and smarter decision-making, helping restaurants deliver exceptional hospitality at scale.

This is a role rooted in innovation and impact. You’ll have space to experiment with emerging technologies and incubate new ideas, but this isn’t a science project. As a leader in Toast’s core POS team, you’ll ship new capabilities to production and collaborate across teams to bring them to market. 

About this roll* (Responsibilities) 

• Lead the design and development of intelligent systems that connect in-restaurant operations to real-time data, AI models, and emerging technologies like voice and video
• Partner across engineering, product, and data teams to experiment, prototype, and deliver innovative features to market, ensuring real-world impact and scalability
• Mentor and influence engineers across teams by promoting best practices, reviewing designs, and helping others navigate ambiguity in high-stakes product areas
• Champion a customer-first mindset, ensuring that everything we build supports restaurant staff and improves the guest experience

Do you have the right ingredients*? (Requirements)

• 10+ years of software engineering experience bringing products to market
• Full-stack engineering approach, with the capability to design products that span the full tech stack from data to UI 
• Comfortable working in high-ambiguity, high-impact environments, with a track record of delivering results through experimentation and iteration
• Strong collaboration skills, especially in partnership with product managers and design
• Deep focus on customer and guest experience
• Experience (or deep interest) in applying AI technologies to real-world product experiences

Our Spread* of Total Rewards
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.

*Bread puns encouraged but not required