Staff Software Engineer, Care Experience

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. The Care Experience team builds the systems and tools Toast’s care agents rely on to support restaurants every day—the foundation behind every phone call, chat conversation, and support case. This work directly determines how quickly restaurants get back up and running. When agents have fast, reliable tools with the right context, they resolve issues in minutes. When they don’t, resolution slows—and every delay in fixing a payment issue, menu problem, or device failure costs restaurants real revenue. We’re rebuilding this experience from the ground up: migrating to a new omnichannel contact center platform and creating a true “single pane of glass” for agents. That means bringing together customer data, account context, device state, case history, and operational tools into one unified system—so agents can focus on solving problems, not piecing together information. As an engineer on this team, you’ll help define and build that foundation for how hundreds of care agents support tens of thousands of restaurants. You’ll drive the migration while also shaping what comes next—integrating backend systems, designing workflows, and continuously improving the experience based on how agents actually work. This work requires strong empathy for internal customers and a willingness to operate within real constraints. You’ll navigate complex integrations, vendor platform limitations, and real-time system dependencies—all while ensuring the system is reliable enough to support a high-throughput, always-on support organization. As a Staff Software Engineer Tech Lead, you’ll own projects end-to-end: building agent-facing features, improving system performance and reliability, and iterating based on real operational feedback. You’ll partner closely with product, care operations, and engineering teams to turn day-to-day support challenges into tools that measurably improve how support is delivered. If you’re motivated by building for internal customers, care about usability as much as system design, and want to see your work directly improve how teams operate at scale, this is a role with clear, tangible impact. A day in the life (Responsibilities) - Drive end-to-end development of care agent tooling—from design through production—owning the full lifecycle and iterating based on agent feedback and operational metrics. - Lead the design and development of next-generation Toast software services and applications that connect the contact center platform with backend systems, giving support teams real-time access to customer, account, device, and case information to deliver a seamless customer experience. - Own the reliability and performance of business-critical agent tools, ensuring they remain fast and available in a high-throughput, always-on support environment. - Partner closely with Product Management, Care, QA and other Software teams on the product roadmap and requirements to build a long term vision for Toast and  translate operational needs into solutions that improve resolution speed and efficiency. - Make pragmatic technical decisions that balance vendor platform capabilities, integration complexity, system reliability, and delivery speed—operating effectively within real-world constraints. - Lead technical design and architecture decisions, helping shape the foundation of Toast’s care tooling as the platform evolves and scales. - Mentor and support other engineers through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance, fostering a culture of ownership, quality, and continuous improvement. - 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 software engineering experience, with a strong track record building and operating production systems using Java, Kotlin, or other object-oriented languages. - Experience designing and implementing AWS-native integrations, including Lambda-based access to backend services and event-driven architectures using services such as EventBridge or Kinesis. - Proven ability to set technical direction for complex systems and lead work from architecture and design through launch, operation, and iteration. - Demonstrated technical leadership, including driving alignment across engineering, product, operations, and business stakeholders. - Experience integrating with third-party platforms and vendor systems while navigating external constraints and evolving APIs. - Strong focus on reliability, security, and operational excellence, with an understanding of how system performance affects customers and business outcomes. - Ability to turn operational workflows and evolving requirements into effective technical solutions, while building relationships and driving work across teams. - Familiarity with modern AI-assisted development tools, such as Cursor, Claude, or MCP servers. 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. 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. 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. ------ 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.