Staff Software Engineer, AI Agent

About Toast

Toast builds technology that helps restaurants and local businesses operate more effectively in a digital environment. Its platform is designed to support owners in running day-to-day operations, growing sales, improving guest engagement, and keeping teams satisfied. The product suite brings together point-of-sale tools, team management, guest-facing technology, and customer support to help restaurants streamline work and create better guest experiences.

As a member of Toast, you will work on meaningful initiatives that shape the company’s future and support the restaurant community in delighting guests, doing the work they love, and growing sustainably.

Role overview

Toast is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to help build AI agents for the Team area within the Fintech business line. This is a mission-critical product area that restaurants depend on to manage staff and improve labor efficiency. In this role, you will contribute to the design, development, and delivery of autonomous agent solutions that combine modern AI capabilities with practical restaurant operations.

What you will do

• Work directly on Team Agent products that use large language models and agent-based frameworks.
• Handle substantial full-stack engineering work across the product lifecycle in a collaborative team setting.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and engineers to create autonomous agents for workforce management.
• Take part in designing, estimating, building, testing, and troubleshooting complete agent solutions.
• Promote spec-led development and modern agent-oriented engineering practices.
• Support team growth through pair programming and detailed reviews of code, architecture, and project plans.
• Advocate for strong standards in agent development, deployment, and quality throughout the lifecycle.
• Contribute ideas and feedback in product design and feature prioritization discussions for the Team Agent area.

Requirements

• Solid grounding in Java, Kotlin, or another object-oriented programming language.
• Working knowledge of current web technologies such as React, TypeScript, REST, and GraphQL.
• Either experience with or a strong curiosity about coding agents and agentic development approaches.
• Strong motivation to build autonomous agents and work with LLM-based systems.
• Demonstrated ability to build effective partnerships with engineering, product, customer success, and other teams.
• Interest in coaching and mentoring other engineers.
• High standards for quality, including the ability to help teams maintain technical excellence in their deliverables.
• Strong customer empathy and a commitment to improving the user experience through reliable technical solutions and continuous product enhancement.

Preferred experience

• Background in designing agentic products.
• Experience building systems that use LLMs and other machine learning models.
• Exposure to event-driven distributed systems.
• Good understanding of workforce management.
• Good understanding of restaurant operations.

AI at Toast

Toast encourages learning new AI tools to help teams work faster, more independently, and with higher quality. AI tools are used across functions such as engineering, product, sales, and support to help employees create more value for customers.

Total rewards

Toast says it offers competitive compensation and benefits designed to attract, retain, and motivate strong talent. The total rewards approach is intended to support healthy lifestyles while providing flexibility for changing employee needs. More information is available on Toast’s benefits page.

How Toast uses AI in hiring

AI tools may be used by recruiters and interviewers to help with note-taking, summarization, and documentation during the hiring process so they can focus on the conversation. Final hiring decisions are made by people.

Working model

Toast follows a hybrid working approach that supports in-person collaboration while also respecting individual needs. The company aims to maintain a strong culture of connection as teams work together to support the hospitality community. The listing is marked as remote.

Diversity and inclusion

Toast states that diversity, equity, and inclusion are central to its culture and product design. The company emphasizes authenticity, inclusivity, respect, and humility in order to create equitable opportunities for all employees.

Accessibility and accommodation

Toast is committed to an accessible hiring process and will provide reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities who need help accessing the application or interview process. Candidates requiring accommodation can contact the hiring team at [email protected].

Additional information

For roles in the United States, Massachusetts law prohibits requiring or administering a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment.

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