Staff Software Engineer, Developer Experience

The job

LIVE Employer public job feed (private-sector employer) Source: the employer's public careers feed · Data: listed 2026-10-13

Job description

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

Bready* to make a change?

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. Because our technology is purpose-built for restaurants, by restaurant people - and increasingly shaped by AI in both what we build and how we build - restaurants can trust that we'll deliver on their needs for today while investing in the experiences that will power their restaurant of the future.

Developer Experience builds the tools and platforms Toast engineers use to write, build, and understand their code. We own local development environments and the inner loop, build tooling and shared libraries, and the internal developer portal and self-service golden paths. We also empower developers across the company by building and maintaining the testing frameworks and core libraries used for developing web services. We contribute to the AI developer workflows that are changing how software gets built at Toast. Our goal is to make every engineer at Toast faster, more independent, and more confident in what they ship.

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to set the technical direction for how Toast engineers build software. You'll pick the highest-leverage problems in the developer workflow, design solutions that work across hundreds of services and many teams, and stay hands-on while you build them. AI is quickly changing what developer tooling can do, and you'll help define what an AI-native developer experience looks like at Toast.

About this roll* (Responsibilities)

• Set technical direction and long-term architecture across Developer Experience's areas: local development, build tooling, shared libraries, and the developer portal.
• Oversee the architecture of the testing frameworks and core libraries used for developing web services.
• Stay hands-on: design, build, and ship the highest leverage and most cross-cutting parts of the platform yourself.
• Collaborate with Product using data and direct engineer feedback to find the biggest sources of friction in the developer workflow, and help turn them into a prioritized, measurable roadmap.
• Design self-service golden paths and paved roads that let product teams create and evolve services with minimal friction or hand-holding.
• Drive technical alignment with partner teams in areas like AI, CICD and Cloud Infrastructure so the end-to-end developer journey feels like one cohesive experience.
• Partner with customer-facing teams to align developer platform solutions with customer and business needs.
• Raise the bar across the team through design reviews, mentorship, and code-pairing, and by growing other engineers into technical leaders.

Do you have the right ingredients*? (Requirements)

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Deep expertise in at least one general-purpose language (e.g. Kotlin, Java, Go, or TypeScript) and comfort working across several.
• Strong experience with build systems and dependency management at scale (e.g. Gradle, Maven, npm), including managing software migrations across hundreds of services.
• A track record of leading technical initiatives across multiple teams, from defining the problem through design, delivery, and adoption.
• Experience designing developer-facing products such as CLIs, SDKs, shared libraries, testing frameworks, or portals, with a focus on usability and adoption.
• Hands-on experience with, and strong opinions about, AI-assisted development tools and agentic development practices.
• Strong communication skills, including writing clear technical strategy and design documents and influencing without authority.
• Deep empathy for engineers as customers, and a habit of measuring outcomes rather than shipping features.

What will help you stand out:

• Experience with internal developer portals or service catalogs (e.g. Backstage).
• Experience building or integrating LLM-powered developer tools, coding agents, or MCP servers.
• Experience with containerized or cloud-based development environments (e.g. Dev Containers, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS ECS).
• Experience defining and instrumenting developer productivity metrics (e.g. DORA, SPACE, build and test analytics).

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.

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.

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Field: Technology Sub-niche: Software engineering All jobs at Toast Pay for this occupation (BLS) All 64 open jobs for this occupation

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About the role

This is a — role in the Technology field (Software engineering) at Toast.

The closest occupation in the official wage statistics is Software developers (a match by name, so treat it as an estimate). Nationally its median pay is $135,980 a year (BLS OEWS, May 2025), employment is projected to change by +10.2% between 2025 and 2035, and the typical entry route is: Bachelor's degree.

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FAQ

What is the Staff Software Engineer, Developer Experience job at Toast?

A private-sector role in technology (software engineering) listed 27 days ago. The full description is on this page and on the employer's page.

Where is this job?

Remote / flexible (United States). A remote or flexible location is listed; confirm with the employer which states are accepted.

How do I apply?

Use the "View this job and apply on the employer's page" button. AtiveSite does not receive applications.

How much does it pay?

The listing does not publish pay. For the closest occupation (Software developers) the national median is $135,980 a year (BLS OEWS, May 2025).

What is the cost of living there?

See the state or country guide for rent, income and taxes.

How old is this listing?

It was posted on 2026-10-13 (27 days ago). Jobs older than 90 days are not shown.

Are there similar jobs?

Yes: browse software engineering jobs in the United States.

Sources and terms

• Job data: Toast careers page public feed (listing dated 2026-10-13). The job disappears from this site when it disappears from the source.
• Wages and projections: BLS OEWS (May 2025) and Employment Projections 2025–35.
• City and county figures: Census Bureau ACS 2020–2024, BEA, BLS QCEW and LAUS, NASA POWER climatology; distances from Census Gazetteer coordinates.

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Sources

• BLS OEWS (wages and employment by occupation, May 2025)
• BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
• BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics
• BLS JOLTS
• BLS State and Metro Area Employment
• Census Bureau American Community Survey (via Census Reporter)
• BEA GDP by state and Regional Price Parities
• IRS 2026 tax adjustments
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• Tax Foundation state income tax rates 2026
• USAJOBS
• USCIS
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• NASA POWER climatology
• GeoNames / Census Gazetteer (coordinates)