Staff Software Engineer, AI Foundations

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.

AI Foundations is Toast's internal platform team for AI. We build the
infrastructure, governance, and developer tooling that makes AI a reliable,
scalable force multiplier across the entire product development lifecycle. Our
products include the LLM Proxy, AI Key Management, Observability pipelines, the
Claude Plugin Marketplace, and autonomous agents that participate directly in
the software development lifecycle.

As a Staff Software Engineer on this team, you'll shape the foundation others
build on: from the LLM Proxy that routes all internal AI traffic, to autonomous
agents that participate directly in the software development lifecycle. If you
want to work at the frontier of AI infrastructure and see your work amplify
hundreds of engineers across a fast-growing company, this is the role.

A day in the life (Responsibilities)

* Design, build, and ship core AI platform infrastructure, including the LLM
proxy, AI key management, and observability pipelines powering Toast's
internal AI ecosystem
* Architect and deliver autonomous agents that participate in the SDLC,
including the AI Review GitHub App and Developer Platform MCP integrations
* Build on and help maintain the internal plugin marketplace, developing
plugins that encode Toast's architectural standards, PR patterns, and quality
practices directly into AI assistant behavior
* Lead technical design and implementation of MCP (Model Context Protocol)
services and no-code service templates that accelerate AI-powered development
across Toast
* Drive adoption of agentic development practices through tooling, internal
evangelism, and hands-on enablement across engineering teams
* Mentor engineers through code reviews, architecture discussions, and pairing
sessions
* Partner with product and platform teams to define and expand the AI
Foundations roadmap

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

* 8+ years of experience designing and implementing scalable backend services
* Strong foundation in Java, Kotlin, or another object-oriented language, with
experience building scalable backend services
* Demonstrated experience building, deploying, or operating LLM-powered agents
or AI-assisted developer tooling
* Deep familiarity with AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub
Copilot) and the ability to extend them through custom plugins, skills, or
hooks
* Hands-on experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol), tool use patterns, or
agentic frameworks
* Strong prompt engineering skills and intuition for how LLM behavior changes
with context, instructions, and tool definitions
* Proven track record of technical leadership: influencing architecture
decisions, setting quality standards, and mentoring peers
* Experience with distributed systems, API design, and cloud-native
infrastructure
* Strong customer empathy and the ability to translate developer pain points
into platform solutions

What will help you stand out

* Familiarity with A2A (Agent-to-Agent) protocols and multi-agent orchestration
patterns
* Experience with machine learning concepts, model evaluation, or ML
infrastructure
* Experience building developer experience platforms, internal tooling, or API
gateways
* Familiarity with observability tooling for AI/LLM systems (e.g., Langfuse,
DataDog)

This is a hybrid role with 2 days per week in the Bengaluru office

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
[https://careers.toasttab.com/toast-benefits].

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. To learn
more: https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring
[https://careers.toasttab.com/ai-in-hiring]

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is Baked into our Recipe for Success

At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we
thrive. 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.

We Thrive Together

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:
https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast
[https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast].

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
[candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com].

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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.