Principal Product Manager, Toast
Kitchen Operations
$165-264k
+ equity
Point of sale and management system for restaurants
Be an early applicant
Point of sale and management system for restaurants
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$165-264k
+ equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
Toast's mission is to enrich the food experience for all.
Role
Who you are
- Proven experience defining and owning product strategy for a complex, operationally critical product — bonus points if it spans hardware and software and/or have experience in food & beverage
- Creative and strategic: you don't just optimize existing products — you identify the next meaningful bet, make the case for it, and drive it from zero to conviction
- Curiosity and a point of view on AI and agentic product opportunities in operational environments — you don't need to have shipped an agent, but you should have a clear perspective on where autonomous action creates real value vs. real risk
- Track record of working directly with enterprise customers, translating nuanced, high-stakes workflow requirements into product decisions that scale well beyond a single logo
- Strong instincts for the SMB operator: you understand what it means to run a restaurant kitchen without a data analyst, an IT team, or a change management budget — and you can build for that reality
- Executive presence to drive alignment without authority across engineering, design, enterprise customer success, sales, and product leadership in a high-stakes, cross-functional environment
What the job involves
- The Kitchen Operations team owns one of Toast's most operationally critical and strategically exciting products: the Kitchen Display System (KDS). Deployed across tens of thousands of restaurants, Toast KDS is the connective tissue between front-of-house and back-of-house, routing tickets to the right prep stations, managing order sequencing, and helping kitchens run fast and accurately under pressure. KDS has strong growth across SMB, enterprise, and international segments
- Our vision is KDS in the vast majority of Toast kitchens within the next few years. Getting there means three things: supporting the most sophisticated enterprise kitchen workflows in the market, differentiating through kitchen data and AI-powered operational insights, and growing adoption among the restaurants that still run on paper tickets
- This is a high-ownership, high-visibility role at the intersection of restaurant operations, hardware-software product, and applied AI. You'll shape how hundreds of thousands of kitchen workers run their stations every day — and you'll be the one building the data and agent layer that lets kitchens run smarter, not just faster
- Own and drive the KDS product strategy — enterprise workflow depth, data differentiation, SMB attach growth, and the agentic AI roadmap — connecting investments to Toast's kitchen adoption vision and near-term business outcomes including ARR growth, support ticket reduction, and enterprise retention
- Define where agentic AI creates real value in the kitchen: proactive prep time adjustments based on real-time order load, automatic kitchen configuration changes tied to labor schedules or ordering channel mix, intelligent ticket routing and load balancing — and build the investment case to pursue the highest-leverage bets
- Own KDS delivery end-to-end, working directly with large restaurant groups to translate complex, high-stakes workflow requirements into scalable product decisions that serve the whole market
- Lead the KDS kitchen data strategy: define what kitchen efficiency insights should look like for operators at every scale, from API-first analytics for enterprise operators to actionable reporting for SMBs, and sequence the investments to unlock it
- Shape and validate the business case for the next-generation KDS strategy — the long-horizon bets that drive future growth
Our take
Running a restaurant means managing a stressful set of elements, all needing to work together seamlessly to create a good experience for diners. Toast helps to streamline processes, and puts an end to piles of paperwork, by providing a platform whereby tableside ordering, menu modifications, labour management, payroll, and more are all housed in one system that can run from a tablet.
Toast offers restaurant-grade hardware and cloud-based, customisable payment solutions to serve clients from startup through to growth phase, as well as a service for established restaurants. By combining all the digital services a restaurant might need, the platform can act as the one and comprehensive solution for restaurants of any size, avoiding restaurateurs from having to invest in a range of technologies.
Toast has over 70,000 restaurants on its books, from food trucks to national brands, and its mobile ordering and payment solutions have made it a recognized brand for consumers. The company's IPO in 2021 saw it valued at over $30 billion and since then, it has added more features to its product suite including wholesale and catering order tools. Toast then, has proven its place as an indispensable player in the restaurant space.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
28% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Feb 2020
$400m
SERIES F
Apr 2019
$250m
SERIES E
Total funding: $899m
Company benefits
- Peer and company recognition programs
- Unlimited Vacation
- Sabbatical opportunity after five years
- Professional Development Reimbursement Program
- Commitment to Employee Wellness through resources such as a quarterly Wellness Stipend
- Various peer and company recognition programs
- 401(k) and matching
- Medical, Dental, & Vision Coverage
- Mental Health Benefits
- Subsidized backup childcare
Company HQ
Fort Point Channel Landmark District, Boston, MA
Leadership
Steve Fredette
(Co-Founder & President)They studied at MIT before co-founding Klick Mobile in 2009 and spending almost 7 years at Endeca. They left their Management role in June 2012 having co-founded Toast in May.
Aman Narang
(Co-Founder & CEO)Having studied Computer Science at MIT, they worked at Endeca for 5 years. They moved from working as Product Manager to work full-time as President of Toast in 2013, having co-founded it the previous year.
Jonathan Grimm
(Co-Founder & CTO)They also studied Computer Science at MIT before working as an Engineer for Endeca for over 4 years. They worked at Oracle for 5 months prior to co-founding Toast in May 2012.
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