About Toast:

Toast is the leading restaurant platform, powering payments, financial services, and operational tools for restaurants globally. Our systems process billions of dollars annually, and our Fraud & Risk platforms are critical to protecting merchants, guests, and Toast itself.

At Toast, Principal Engineers (P5) are senior technical leaders who define direction, unblock teams, and deliver scalable outcomes across the organization.

Are you bready to design systems that protect revenue, stop fraud in real time, and scale globally?

Role:

As a Principal Software Engineer (P5) on the Fraud & Risk platform, you will be responsible for end-to-end technical ownership of highly complex, business-critical systems.

You will:

• Define architecture and long-term technical strategy
• Drive execution across multiple teams
• Make high-stakes technical decisions with broad business impact
• Act as a multiplier for engineering quality and velocity

You will operate comfortably in ambiguity and help Toast scale safely as transaction volumes, fraud sophistication, and regulatory complexity grow.

What You’ll Do

:1. Technical Direction & Architecture (Primary Accountability

• )Own and evolve the architecture for Fraud and Risk systems spanning multiple teams
• .Define long-term technical vision and roadmaps aligned with Toast’s business goals
• .Lead and approve architecture and design reviews for high-impact initiatives
• .Make tradeoff decisions across latency, accuracy, cost, scalability, and reliability

.2. Fraud & Risk Systems at Scal

• eDesign and operate systems for
• :Real-time fraud detection and preventio
• nRisk scoring and decisioning engine
• sChargeback prevention and dispute workflow
• sBuild low-latency, high-throughput distributed systems processing millions of transactions per day
• .Partner with Data Science team to productionize fraud/risk models with strict SLAs

.3. Execution Through Influence (Not Ownership Alone

• )Drive complex initiatives that require coordination across multiple engineering teams
• .Influence technical decisions without direct authority
• .Identify systemic issues and proactively drive cross-org solutions

.4. Reliability, Scale & Operational Excellenc

• eEnsure systems meet availability, durability, and compliance requirements (PCI, SOC, etc.)
• .Design for failure modes, graceful degradation, and recovery
• .Improve observability, incident response, and operational maturity
• .Optimize infrastructure and architecture for cost at scale

.5. Mentorship & Raising the Engineering Ba

• rMentor Senior and Staff engineers, helping them grow technical leadership skills
• .Set standards for code quality, design rigor, testing, and operational readiness
• .Lead by example with hands-on contributions where impact is highest

.
What We’re Looking Fo

r:Experience & Sco

• pe12+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated P5-level or equivalent impac
• t.Proven ownership of large, mission-critical systems with significant business impac
• t.History of driving results in ambiguous, fast-moving environment

s.Fraud, Risk & Payments Experti

• seDeep experience in payments, fraud detection, risk systems, or financial platform
• s.Strong understanding of real-time decisioning system
• s.Experience working with fraud signals, rules engines, or ML-driven risk models is highly value

d.Technical Dep

• thExpert in Java or Kotlin (backend focus
• ).Strong fundamentals in distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architecture
• s.Deep experience with AWS and cloud-native desig
• n.Strong knowledge of data stores (Postgres, DynamoDB, etc.) and messaging system

s.Leadership & Judgme

• ntExceptional problem-solving and decision-making skill
• s.Strong written and verbal communication; able to clearly articulate complex tradeoff
• s.Comfortable being accountable for decisions with large blast radiu

s.
Our Spread of Total Rewar

ds:Toast offers a competitive compensation and benefits package that supports a healthy lifestyle and flexibility for our employees’ needs. Learn more about our benefits: Toast Benefi

ts.
Our Tech St

ack:Toast’s stack inclu

• des:Backend: Microservice architecture in Java and DropWizard, AWS services (S3, RDS, Lambda), .Net/C#, and J
• ava.Frontend: React, ES6, MVC, and Angu
• lar.Data: Postgres databases, RabbitMQ clusters, Apache Spark, SQS, SNS, Dynamo, Redshift, OpenSearch, and Dr

uid.
We Are Toas

ters:Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are baked into our recipe for success. Toast embraces the diversity of the restaurant industry, fostering inclusivity, respect, and trust. We believe equitable opportunities and authentic principles drive success, enabling us to lead in our indu

stry.