Principal Software Engineer, Support Tech

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.

Support Technology builds the systems and platforms that power how Toast supports restaurants across every stage of their journey. Our teams work at the intersection of customer experience, agent experience, and intelligent systems, developing the capabilities that enable scalable, high-quality support across channels.

Support Tech is responsible for a broad ecosystem that includes agent tooling, customer-facing support experiences, communications infrastructure, and the emerging platform capabilities that enable AI-assisted support. These systems work together to help restaurants resolve issues quickly, access the help they need, and operate their businesses with confidence.

As Toast continues to grow, the support platform must evolve to handle increasing scale and complexity while improving the overall customer experience. Support Tech plays a critical role in shaping how that platform develops, ensuring that our systems remain reliable, extensible, and capable of supporting new experiences and capabilities over time.

About This Role

We are building the Customer Experience Platform that will define how Toast supports restaurants at scale.

As Principal Engineer for Support Tech, you will serve as the LOB-level technical leader responsible for defining and driving the multi-year strategy that shapes how Toast delivers support. You will translate business strategy into coherent technical direction, align engineering investments with measurable customer and operational outcomes, and guide the architectural evolution of the support platform.

This role extends beyond ownership of individual systems or services. You will help define how core components of the support ecosystem - including AI-assisted capabilities, contact center infrastructure, agent tooling, and customer-facing support experiences - work together as a unified platform. You will partner closely with engineering, product, design, and Care leadership to establish a shared technical vision, make high-impact architectural decisions, and ensure that our platform continues to scale as new capabilities and experiences are introduced.

Success in this role requires strong systems thinking, sound architectural judgment, and the ability to bring clarity to complex technical environments. You will help strengthen engineering leadership across the organization, guide teams toward durable platform solutions, and ensure that our technology investments translate into meaningful improvements for both restaurants and the Care teams that support them.

A day in the life (Responsibilities)

• Define and drive the multi-year technical strategy for the Support Tech platform, ensuring alignment with company goals and long-term customer experience outcomes.
• Lead architectural direction for critical platform capabilities that support customer and agent support experiences, including contact center infrastructure, AI-assisted support systems, and internal agent tooling.
• Evaluate and de-risk major technical investments such as platform migrations, vendor integrations, and large-scale architectural changes.
• Ensure that evolving systems across Support Tech operate as a coherent and extensible platform rather than a collection of disconnected tools or services.
• Partner with product, design, and Care leadership to translate strategic goals into scalable technical solutions that improve support outcomes and operational efficiency.
• Establish architectural principles and engineering standards that guide teams toward durable, scalable platform solutions.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to senior engineers, helping raise the overall engineering bar across the Support Tech organization.
• Influence technical direction across multiple teams and functions, aligning stakeholders around shared platform decisions and long-term strategy.
• 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)

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a strong background building and evolving large-scale distributed systems and customer-facing platforms.
• Demonstrated experience defining technical strategy or architecture for complex platforms spanning multiple systems and teams.
• Strong systems thinking and platform design experience, with the ability to connect individual services and tools into coherent technical ecosystems.
• Proven ability to lead high-impact architectural decisions and guide organizations through complex technical transitions.
• Experience influencing technical direction across teams and collaborating with product, design, and operational partners to deliver meaningful business outcomes.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to articulate complex technical ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• A track record of mentoring senior engineers and raising the engineering bar within an organization.
• Experience working on customer experience platforms, workflow systems, or other complex operational software environments is strongly preferred.

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.

Pay Range

$246,000—$394,000 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 [email protected].

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