Engineering Lead, New Ventures

About the Role

Toast is seeking an Engineering Lead to join the New Ventures team and build one of Toast's newest products from 0 to 1. In this player/coach role, you will lead a tight-knit team of 4-5 experienced senior engineers, driving engineering velocity, hands-on problem solving, and outsized customer impact.

You will partner closely with the Product Lead to run weekly sprints, embed in product discovery, interface directly with customers, write code, fix bugs, and establish engineering guardrails that optimize for speed without compromising quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead, unblock, and collaborate with a team of experienced senior engineers, fostering rapid iteration and technical excellence.
• Act as a player/coach by actively writing code, fixing bugs, and triaging customer issues.
• Partner directly with the Product Lead on weekly sprints, prioritizing features and weighing technical tradeoffs.
• Integrate modern development and AI tools into daily engineering workflows to boost velocity.
• Establish shared norms, guardrails, and lightweight best practices to support rapid execution.
• Navigate the Toast ecosystem and lead cross-team technical collaboration across engineering and platform groups.
• Stay close to customers through feedback sessions and direct problem-solving.
• Partner with senior engineers to define technical strategy and architecture for a 0-to-1 product.

Requirements

• Proven 0-to-1 experience bringing a product from initial concept to MVP and beyond.
• Player/coach mentality with the technical depth to review designs/code and contribute directly alongside senior ICs.
• Experience managing or leading small, high-leverage engineering teams in lean environments.
• Customer empathy with a track record of triaging and fixing issues based on direct user feedback.
• Demonstrated experience adopting modern tools and defining lightweight engineering norms/guardrails.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, particularly with Product Leads.
• Experience building with LLMs or shipping AI-powered product experiences.
• Self-directed, low-ego, and comfortable navigating ambiguity.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in operationally complex industries.
• Founder or early-startup experience, or background in internal incubation/new ventures teams.