Principal Data 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.

At Toast, we're building the restaurant platform that helps restaurants adapt, take control, and thrive. The Customer Success (CS) organization plays a pivotal role in helping customers get the most out of our products and we're transforming our data capabilities to drive a new era of proactive, data-informed customer engagement. 

The CS Data & Analytics team is at the center of this transformation, building the data infrastructure that makes proactive, data-informed customer engagement possible at scale for ~150,000 restaurant locations.

You'll be a founding member of a newly chartered data engineering function within Customer Success with a direct hand in shaping the architecture, tooling, domain model, and team culture from day one. This is a rare opportunity to build something from greenfield, with visibility to VP and senior CS leadership.

As a Data Engineer on the Customer Success Data & Analytics team, you’ll design, build, and scale the data platforms and pipelines that power insights across our Customer Success organization. Reporting to the Director of Data Infrastructure & Engineering, you’ll work closely with Data Infrastructure, Analytics, Engineering, and Product teams to ensure high-quality, reliable data is accessible and actionable.

This is a hands-on engineering role focused on delivering production-grade, scalable, and reliable data systems that support analytics, reporting, and operational decision-making across Customer Success.

• Design, build, and maintain scalable, production-ready data pipelines (batch and real-time) for Customer Success using modern data technologies.
• Develop and evolve data models and schemas that enable reporting, analytics, and machine learning across Customer Success functions.
• Partner with CS operations leaders across care, workforce, and CX to translate business requirements into pipeline and infrastructure priorities, ensuring data work is directly connected to customer retention and operational outcomes.
• Ensure data quality, observability, lineage, and governance are built into every data workflow.
• Implement best practices for cost-efficient, performant cloud-based data infrastructure.
• Contribute to data platform tooling and frameworks that support self-service analytics and reusability across teams.
• Actively monitor and optimize data workflows for reliability, scale, and maintainability.
• Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to define and track key metrics and ensure consistent data definitions.
• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and technical architecture planning to continually raise engineering standards.
• Build and maintain semantic and metrics layer foundations (e.g., dbt metrics, Snowflake semantic layer) that enable consistent, reusable definitions of CS KPIs across reporting and analytics surfaces.
• Contribute to the design and evolution of the CS data domain model including Customer 360, omnichannel interaction data, case management, and agent performance in close partnership with cross-functional stakeholders.
  

Partner with Toast's Business, Technology & Transformation (BTT) organization to establish data governance practices, security policies, and architecture standards that will serve as the foundation for CS data infrastructure. As a founding team member, you'll help define the norms, not just follow them.

• Ensure data pipelines, storage, and access patterns adhere to BTT data standards, security policies, and compliance requirements.
• Partner with BTT governance forums to align on design patterns, data architecture decisions, and SLA expectations.
• Maintain documentation and metadata for all data assets in accordance with established governance processes.
  

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

• 5+ years of experience in data engineering, software engineering, or a related role building and maintaining data systems in production.
• Strong SQL skills and experience with a programming language such as Python, Scala, or Java.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-based data platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Experience building and optimizing ETL/ELT workflows using tools such as Airflow, dbt, or similar orchestration frameworks.
• Deep understanding of data modeling, data warehousing, and pipeline design.
• Ability to write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code for data transformations and automation.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate technical tradeoffs and data concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders, including operations and business leaders.
• Proven ability to work collaboratively with analytics, operations, and engineering teams.
• Strong problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and a drive to build scalable, reliable systems.
  

What will help you stand out (Non-essential Skills/Nice to Haves)

• Experience building and optimizing data systems that operate at significant scale, managing billions of records across multiple data domains and systems, with the foresight to design for 5-year growth and future platform scale.
• Comfort using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude, Snowflake Cortex AI) to accelerate pipeline development, testing, and documentation and curiosity about how GenAI can enhance data product quality.
• Experience with real-time data streaming (Kafka, Kinesis, or Pub/Sub).
• Familiarity with modern data warehouse/lakehouse technologies (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Delta Lake).
• Experience with CI/CD, infrastructure as code, or containerization (e.g., Docker, Terraform).
• Exposure to data governance, metadata management, and observability tools.
• Background in SaaS or Customer Success analytics (usage data, retention metrics, customer health).
• Experience working with CS or CX-adjacent source systems such as Salesforce, Five9, Intercom, or similar CCaaS/CRM platforms and familiarity with the data models and integration patterns they produce.
• Knowledge of data security, privacy, and compliance in cloud environments.

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 who thrive here are those who embrace changes that let us build more for our customers; it’s a core part of our culture.

Our Total Rewards Philosophy

We strive to provide competitive compensation and benefits programs that help to attract, retain, and motivate the best and brightest people in our industry. Our total rewards package goes beyond great earnings potential and provides the means to a healthy lifestyle with the flexibility to meet Toasters’ changing needs. Learn more about our benefits at https://careers.toasttab.com/toast-benefits.