Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Toast, Inc.

Job Overview

Location

Remote, USA

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer at Toast, Inc., you will be at the forefront of innovation, driving the development of cutting-edge AI and strategy engineering solutions. This pivotal role is designed for a hands-on technical leader who thrives on building transformative 0-to-1 tools that will fundamentally reshape how our sales teams operate. You will not be maintaining existing systems; instead, you will be architecting and implementing the core intelligence models and backend services that eliminate friction and enhance efficiency across our entire Go-To-Market technology stack. Your work will directly contribute to empowering business owners and sales professionals with data-driven insights and automated workflows, enabling them to make faster, more informed decisions and ultimately drive business success in the digital world.
• Your day-to-day will be deeply involved in hands-on execution, dedicating the majority of your time to architecting, coding, and deploying high-performance backend services and sophisticated Machine Learning pipelines. You will be instrumental in building and prototyping novel internal products from the ground up, leveraging the power of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Agentic AI to automate critical sales functions such as account research, lead prioritization, and the intricate logic of complex quoting processes. A significant part of your role will involve designing and implementing core intelligence models that deliver real-time recommendations to sales users, thereby reducing manual data entry and accelerating deal velocity. You will also be responsible for developing the essential backend connective tissue that seamlessly integrates our custom quoting engine, Salesforce, and internal data lakes, ensuring a smooth, low-latency, end-to-end user experience. As a domain expert, you will tackle complex synchronization and architectural challenges across the Go-To-Market stack, ensuring that all systems are not only scalable but also highly resilient. Furthermore, you will champion engineering excellence by conducting rigorous code reviews, implementing comprehensive automated testing strategies, and actively mentoring junior engineers (SE1-SE3) on the team, modeling best practices and fostering a culture of quality. Your ultimate goal will be to deliver significant core capabilities that have a broad and impactful reach, translating high-level strategic objectives into sequenced, production-ready code. You will proactively anticipate shifts in product needs and design flexible, decoupled backend systems that can readily adapt and evolve in alignment with our overarching AI strategy. Ensuring the utmost reliability of our Go-To-Market tools will be paramount, achieved through building deep observability into every service you ship.
• You will be joining the dynamic AI & Strategy Engineering team at Toast, a group dedicated to building the next generation of intelligent tools that empower our sales force. This team operates at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research and practical application, focusing on creating solutions that have a direct and measurable impact on business outcomes. Toast itself is committed to helping restaurants and local businesses thrive in the digital age by providing comprehensive technology solutions that streamline operations, boost sales, enhance customer engagement, and improve employee satisfaction. Our company culture is defined by a hunger to build and learn, where embracing new AI tools is seen as a key enabler for faster, more independent, and higher-quality product development across all departments.
• In this role, you will have an unparalleled opportunity to deepen your expertise in applied AI and Machine Learning, particularly in the rapidly evolving fields of LLMs and agentic workflows. You will gain invaluable experience in building and deploying production-grade ML models and architecting solutions using frameworks like LangChain or implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and model fine-tuning techniques. You will also hone your skills in designing and implementing complex, distributed backend systems and event-driven architectures, with a focus on seamless integration across enterprise software like custom quoting engines and CRMs such as Salesforce. By tackling challenging 0-to-1 product development, you will learn to translate abstract business problems into tangible, scalable, and resilient technical solutions. Furthermore, you will develop strong leadership and mentorship capabilities by guiding more junior engineers and driving engineering best practices, contributing to your growth as a principal-level engineer and a technical leader within the organization.

🎯 Requirements

• Deep backend expertise with extensive experience in backend languages such as Java, Go, or Python, and a proven track record of building complex, distributed systems.
• Practical, hands-on experience deploying Machine Learning models and building with LLMs (e.g., LangChain, RAG architectures, or Model Fine-tuning) in a production environment.
• Experience building or deeply integrating with complex enterprise software, specifically custom quoting engines or CRM internals (e.g., Salesforce Apex/LWC).
• Ability to design event-driven architectures and manage data flow across disparate systems with high integrity.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, or a related technical field.

🏖️ Benefits

• Competitive compensation and benefits programs designed to attract, retain, and motivate top talent.
• A comprehensive total rewards package that extends beyond earnings potential, supporting a healthy lifestyle with flexibility.
• Opportunities for professional growth and development within a company that values learning and innovation in AI.

Skills & Technologies

Python

Java

AWS

SQS

Senior

Remote

Degree Required

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Toast, Inc.

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About Toast, Inc.

Toast, Inc. provides cloud-based restaurant management software and hardware, integrating point-of-sale, payment processing, inventory, online ordering, staff scheduling, analytics, and customer engagement tools into one platform for full-service and quick-service restaurants across the United States.

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