Principal Software Engineer

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. A bit about the team Every restaurant is different and faces its own unique challenges. Across global markets, these challenges vary significantly. The mission of the Europe team is to tackle these challenges head-on by building purpose-built products that meet the complex needs of the Europe customer base. This includes deepening the product experience with our existing European customers and also adapting our product for future market growth. To meet these goals it involves building brand new products and features that integrate seamlessly into the existing Toast product suite. As a Principal Engineer on the team, you will set the technical direction for how we rapidly build iterative solutions within the existing Toast technology stack—all while maintaining excellent quality and architecting for long-term scale. As a Principal Engineer, you are expected to be closely aligned with engineering leaders across Toast. You will define and promote architectural best practices, champion new technologies and innovative thinking, and serve as a technical thought leader for the broader organization. You will be responsible for mentoring and upskilling the engineering teams around you. If you're motivated by solving problems at the intersection of customer needs and technical challenges, and eager to leave a lasting mark on Toast’s future growth, this role offers a rare opportunity to do so. A day in the life (Responsibilities) Develop and execute technical strategies to solve complex business challenges, leveraging data and customer insights to prioritize impactful improvements Establish guiding technical and delivery principles that influence engineering practices across the broader engineering organization. Mentor and guide engineers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, inclusivity, and engineering excellence. Build and maintain strong partnerships across lines of business, aligning technical solutions with strategic objectives. Work closely with our cross functional leaders across the customer facing organisations What you'll need to thrive (Requirements) 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with a strong background in full-stack development is essential. Extensive experience with Java, Kotlin, or other object-oriented languages, and experience building complex, customer-facing applications is a must Strong skills with modern web and API standards and technologies (e.g. React, REST, GraphQL), delivering cohesive end-to-end experiences from UI through services. You must have experience leading or influencing large, cross-team platform initiatives, setting technical direction beyond a single team or service. Proficient with data stores, both relational and non-relational databases. Demonstrated ability to deliver and operate business-critical, customer-facing systems, with a strong focus on reliability, performance, and operational excellence. Demonstrated ability to deliver high-impact, scalable solutions, balancing platform leverage with end-to-end user experience. Strong leadership and mentoring skills, with a track record of guiding teams through architectural and experience transformations. Excellent communication skills and a passion for engineering excellence, including collaborating closely with product, design, and operations to improve customer outcomes. Passionate about driving innovation and continuously improving engineering practices. What will make you stand out (Nice to Have) Deep expertise in pricing systems or e-commerce tax management for international markets Track record of launching zero-to-one products within established organizations Experience operating in both larger tech organizations and startup environments, with demonstrated ability to thrive at enterprise scale ** This i ... (truncated, view full listing at source)