Staff Software Engineer, Voice AI Platform

Location(s): US (remote), Boston (hybrid), or New York (hybrid)

Who We Are

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. We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join the Voice AI Team.

On the Voice AI Team, our mission is to build and operate the voice platform that powers Toast and to ship novel applications on top of it that create real value across Toast's customer base. This is a greenfield space where the platform and its use cases are being defined together, and the work you do here will be foundational to how Toast uses voice AI for years to come.

As a Staff Software Engineer on this team, you'll take ownership of significant projects end-to-end: designing systems, driving execution across the team, and making the technical decisions that shape how the platform grows. You'll work closely with product, engineering, and stakeholders across Toast to turn ambiguous problems into reliable, scalable systems.

About this roll* (Responsibilities)

• Design, build, deploy, and maintain highly resilient and scalable backend services, applications, and core platform components supporting Toast's Voice AI platform used across teams

• Conceive and lead complex, cross-cutting projects from design through production, owning outcomes and driving alignment across stakeholders and across a broad range of stakeholders

• Shape the technical direction on your team and beyond by making architectural decisions, defining patterns, and reducing complexity for the engineers and teams that depend on your work

• Build and evolve integrations with AI platforms and internal Toast systems, making pragmatic tradeoffs between speed, reliability, and long-term scalability

• Establish and implement patterns for observability, monitoring, and evaluation frameworks for AI-powered systems, using production data to understand and continuously improve system behavior

• Set and hold the bar for engineering quality and best practices through standards, patterns, and written guidance that others naturally adopt, raising the bar for the team and the broader organization

• Mentor engineers at all levels through code reviews, design feedback, and technical guidance

Do you have the right ingredients*? (Requirements)

• 8+ years of experience with object-oriented languages such as Java or Kotlin

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field

• Experience developing AI-integrated products or features, with a practical understanding of how to ship and iterate on systems that incorporate LLMs or other AI capabilities

• Experience building and reasoning about AI-powered systems, including nondeterminism, evaluation strategies, observability, and cost management

• Experience shipping complex, mission-critical production services and owning them long-term

• Track record of leading multi-person and multi-team projects end-to-end, from design through rollout

• Deep understanding of distributed systems, scalability, and production reliability

• Basic familiarity with frontend development

• Strong cross-team communication and collaboration skills; able to influence direction without formal authority both within your team and across the broader organization

• Actively uses AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) in day-to-day development and have caused others to become more proficient with AI coding tools

• Experience with voice or conversational AI platforms is a plus, but not required

Our Tech Stack

Our backend services follow a microservice architecture written in Kotlin and Java using DropWizard, running on AWS (DynamoDB, RDS, Lambda). We store data in sharded Postgres databases and have our own platform for user management, canary deployments, and load balancing. Our web front-end is built with React and ES6.

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

$193,000—$309,000 USD

Zone B

$168,000—$269,000 USD

Zone C

$151,000—$242,000 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. To learn more: https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring

Our Approach to Hybrid WorkingWe 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

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

At Toast, 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-toast.

Apply today!

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 candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com.

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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.