About the role
<p>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.</p> <p>Toast is building the all-in-one platform that helps restaurants and local businesses thrive in a digital-first world. As Toast expands beyond restaurants, our Retail team is redefining how we serve modern retail businesses — from inventory and supplier management to purchase orders and beyond.</p> <p>The <strong>Retail Experience (RXP)</strong> team is a high-impact group focused on making Toast feel truly built for retail. While adoption has grown, we consistently hear that the experience doesn’t yet fully meet the expectations of retail operators. RXP exists to close that gap.</p> <p>Our mission is to identify friction across the end-to-end retail journey — from onboarding to daily operations — and deliver cohesive, retail-first improvements across Toast’s ecosystem. We work across the Retail module and the broader platform to ensure customers feel supported from day one through long-term success.</p> <p>As a <strong>Staff Backend Engineer</strong> on RXP, you’ll play a critical role in shaping the systems and services that power these experiences — ensuring they are scalable, reliable, and deeply aligned with customer needs.<br><br></p> <p><strong>A day in the life (Responsibilities)</strong>:</p> <p>As a Staff Software Engineer on the Retail Experience team, you’ll operate as a technical leader and systems thinker, driving backend architecture and execution across a broad set of initiatives:</p> <ul> <li>Architect and build scalable, reliable backend systems that power retail-first experiences across Toast’s platform.</li> <li>Identify and address gaps in existing services, improving performance, data consistency, and system cohesion across the retail journey.</li> <li>Collaborate closely with Product, Design, Frontend, and Platform teams to deliver seamless, end-to-end customer experiences.</li> <li>Lead technical design discussions and influence architectural decisions that align with long-term retail strategy.</li> <li>Prototype and iterate quickly on new ideas, incorporating direct customer feedback and real-world usage.</li> <li>Mentor engineers and elevate engineering standards across the team, fostering a strong culture of ownership and technical excellence.</li> <li>Drive improvements in observability, reliability, and operational maturity of backend systems.</li> <li>Stay curious and continuously explore new technologies and patterns to improve system design and developer productivity.</li> <li>Leverage cutting edge AI tools to enhance your development workflow, improve velocity, and help pioneer new app