Staff Software Engineer – Traffic Engineering

Toast

. Design, build, deploy, and operate the traffic infrastructure that carries every request across Toast — from the public edge through cloud networking down to service-to-service traffic .

Posted 5/22/2026full-timeRemote • Alabama • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $193,000 - $309,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

CloudConsulDNSJavaKotlinScalaTerraform

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design, build, deploy, and operate the traffic infrastructure that carries every request across Toast — from the public edge through cloud networking down to service-to-service traffic
Lead complex, multi-team projects that improve how Toast services discover, route to, secure, and observe one another
Own the reliability of critical traffic infrastructure end-to-end, from design through on-call response, post-incident learning, and long-term hardening
Design solutions that anticipate future scale and product needs (multi-region, new protocols, evolving service-mesh patterns) while making explicit tradeoffs
Partner with the team on cloud networking, edge routing (Cloudflare), DNS, and IaC-driven automation
Act as a force multiplier: mentor engineers, improve developer ergonomics for service owners, and make the platform easier and safer to operate
Lead through influence across multiple teams and reporting lines, setting technical direction and driving adoption of platform standards without direct authority
Leverage cutting-edge AI tools to enhance your development workflow, improve velocity, and help pioneer new approaches to building — contributing to a culture of innovation and productivity across the team

Requirements

What you’ll need

Experience shipping and operating mission-critical production services
Led complex projects that span multiple teams and have presented technical plans to both engineering and non-engineering audiences
Have a growth mindset with an emphasis on improving yourself, the engineers around you, and your functional area
Deep, hands-on experience in Kotlin or another JVM language (Java, Scala)
Built or operated a service mesh in production — Envoy, Istio, Linkerd, Consul Connect, or similar
Managed cloud infrastructure with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or similar)
Hands-on experience with DNS and edge routing through a CDN such as Cloudflare, Cloudfront, Akamai, or Fastly
Working knowledge of TLS — termination, mTLS, and certificate lifecycle management at scale
Comfortable working across the networking stack and are comfortable digging into different network layers

Benefits

Comp & perks

Health insurance
401(k) matching
Flexible work hours
Paid time off
Professional development opportunities

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

KotlinJavaScalaservice meshEnvoyIstioLinkerdConsul ConnectInfrastructure as CodeTerraform

Soft Skills

leadershipmentoringcommunicationcollaborationgrowth mindsetinfluenceproblem-solvinginnovationdeveloper ergonomicstechnical direction