Staff Software Engineer

<h3><strong>About the Job</strong></h3> <p>Toast is building the restaurant platform that helps restaurants adapt, take control, and focus on what they do best: growing businesses they love. Our platform streamlines operations, increases revenue, and delivers outstanding guest experiences by combining point of sale, team management, guest-facing technology, and award-winning customer support.</p> <p>As a Toaster, you’ll work on meaningful projects that shape the company’s future. Join us as we empower the restaurant community to thrive.</p> <h3><strong>Role Overview</strong></h3> <p>Toast is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Membership team in India.</p> <p>In this role, you will be a senior IC technical leader for the Membership domain, responsible for shaping architecture and engineering direction for systems that power subscriptions, memberships, entitlements, and usage tracking across Toast’s ecosystem.</p> <p>This is a hands-on role with significant cross-team influence. You will partner closely with Product, UX, and engineering teams to design scalable platform systems that balance long-term architectural health with fast-moving product needs.</p> <p>You will operate across multiple teams, define technical standards, and drive alignment on architecture, APIs, and system boundaries.</p> <h3><strong>Key Responsibilities</strong></h3> <h4><strong>1. Architecture &amp; System Ownership</strong></h4> <ul> <li>Define and evolve the long-term architecture of the Membership platform.</li> <li>Design distributed systems for subscriptions, entitlements, and usage tracking.</li> <li>Own service boundaries, APIs, and data models across PostgreSQL and DynamoDB.</li> <li>Design event-driven systems using Kafka, Pulsar, or similar technologies.</li> <li>Ensure correctness in distributed systems (idempotency, retries, consistency, failure).</li> <li>Identify architectural gaps, scalability risks, and performance bottlenecks; drive resolution.</li> </ul> <h4><strong>2. Hands-on Engineering &amp; Delivery</strong></h4> <ul> <li>Stay hands-on in designing and code reviewing backend services in Java/Kotlin.</li> <li>Build and evolve microservices deployed on AWS.</li> <li>Translate product requirements into scalable technical designs in collaboration with Product and UX.</li> <li>Improve system performance, reliability, and production readiness.</li> <li>Apply modern engineering practices including CI/CD, version control, and agile development.</li> </ul> <h4><strong>3. Technical Leadership &amp; Cross-Team Influence</strong></h4> <ul> <li>Lead architecture reviews, RFCs, and design discussions.</li> <li>Mentor engineers and raise the bar for system design and engineering quality.</li> <li>Drive alignment on APIs, ownership boundaries, and technical standards.</li> <li>Communicate technical trade-offs clearly across engineering and product stakeholders.</li> </ul> <h4><strong>4. Operational Excellence &amp; Reliability</strong></h4> <ul> <li>Own reliability and health of production systems.</li> <li>Lead incident analysis and drive systemic improvements.</li> <li>Define and evolve observability standards (metrics, logs, tracing).</li> <li>Continuously reduce operational burden through better system design.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>What You’ll Need</strong></h3> <ul> <li>Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience)</li> <li>10+ years of experience building backend systems and APIs.</li> <li>Strong expertise in Java and/or Kotlin.</li> <li>Proven experience designing large-scale distributed systems and microservices.</li> <li>Deep understanding of system design trade-offs (scalability, consistency, latency, reliability).</li> <li>Experience with event-driven systems (Kafka, Pulsar, or similar).</li> <li>Strong experience with PostgreSQL and/or DynamoDB.</li> <li>Experience building cloud-native systems on AWS.</li> <li>Strong production systems experience, including monitoring, debugging, and incident response.</li> <li>Experience influencing technical direction across multiple teams.</li> <li>Strong communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders.</li> <li>Comfortable working in ambiguous, fast-evolving environments.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Nice to Have</strong></h3> <ul> <li>Experience in fintech, ecommerce, or subscription/membership platforms.</li> <li>Experience with observability, resiliency, and large-scale distributed systems.</li> <li>Experience with CI/CD pipelines and modern engineering practices.</li> <li>Experience building systems from scratch or in early-stage environments.</li> <li>Experience working across product-facing APIs and backend systems.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Our Tech Stack</strong></h3> <p><strong>&nbsp;Backend:</strong> Java, Kotlin, Dropwizard<br><strong>Architecture:</strong> Microservices, Event-driven systems<br><strong>Cloud:</strong> AWS (Lambda, S3, RDS, EC2)<br><strong>Data:</strong> PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Spark<br><strong>Messaging:</strong> Kafka, Pulsar, RabbitMQ<br><strong>Frontend (adjacent):</strong> React, ES6</p><div class="content-conclusion"><p><strong>How Toast Uses AI in its Hiring Process</strong></p> <p>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: <a href="https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring">https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring</a></p> <p><strong><strong data-stringify-type="bold">Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is Baked into our Recipe for Success</strong></strong></p> <p>At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we thrive.&nbsp;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.</p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong data-stringify-type="bold">We Thrive Together</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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: <a class="c-link" href="https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast" target="_blank" data-stringify-link="https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast" data-sk="tooltip_parent">https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast</a>.</span></p> <p><strong>Apply today!</strong></p> <p>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 <a href="mailto:candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com">candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com</a>.</p> <p><em>------</em></p> <p><em>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.</em></p></div>