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. We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the Advanced Analytics Platform (AAP) team. The AAP team owns the data platform powering Toast's analytics products and AI/ML capabilities. Our mission is to build the foundational data infrastructure - real-time streaming, data lakehouse, feature serving, and cloud-native analytics pipelines - that enables product teams across Toast to build intelligent, data-driven experiences for over 170,000 restaurant customers. We are in the middle of a significant platform evolution: migrating to Apache Iceberg, standing up a new Feature Store, and scaling our streaming infrastructure to meet the demands of a rapidly growing business. As a Principal Software Engineer on this team, you will play a key role in defining the technical strategy for our most critical data platform initiatives. You will define how we evolve our architecture, build the frameworks and patterns that enable other engineers to move fast, and establish Toast as a leader in data platform engineering. This is a role for someone who thinks at the level of the business problem first, translates that into clear technical direction, and brings teams along with them. A day in the life (Responsibilities) Design, build, deploy, and maintain highly resilient and scalable systems that are critical to the success of Data at Toast Develop and execute technical strategies to solve complex business challenges, leveraging data-driven decisions to prioritize impactful changes. Build and maintain strong partnerships across lines of business, aligning technical solutions with strategic objectives. Mentor and guide engineers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, inclusivity, and engineering excellence. Effectively communicate technical direction, guide teams through execution and drive organizational quality practices Diagnose performance bottlenecks and implement optimizations 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) 8+ years of experience in software engineering with demonstrated expertise in data platform or distributed systems engineering Strong background in data lakehouse technologies (Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, or similar), streaming infrastructure (Apache Kafka, Apache Pulsar, or similar), and cloud-native data platforms (Databricks, AWS, or similar) Demonstrated ability to deliver high-impact, scalable solutions in complex, multi-product environments. Strong leadership and mentoring skills, with a track record of guiding teams through architectural transformations. Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences. Passionate about driving innovation and continuously improving engineering practices. Our tech stack Our data platform runs on AWS and spans Apache Iceberg for table format and lakehouse architecture, Apache Kafka and Pulsar for real-time streaming, Apache Spark for data processing, and DynamoDB and Postgres for operational data stores. We are migrating from legacy ETL patterns toward a modern, cloud-native data lakehouse and building out Feature Store capabilities to power ML-driven product experiences. Our backend services are primarily Kotlin and Java. 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 wh