Product Strategy, Senior Associate

About the Team 

The Product Strategy & Operations team helps Toast’s product organization operate at its best. We partner with Product, Engineering, Design, Go-to-Market, Finance, and other cross-functional teams to improve how product teams focus strategy, make decisions, and operate. We bring structure to ambiguity, design scalable operating systems, and solve high-priority problems that unlock better outcomes for our customers and our business.

A day in the life (Responsibilities) 

As a Senior Associate, Product Strategy & Operations, you will work as a strategic and operational partner to Toast’s product teams. This is a highly cross-functional, project-based role focused on improving product strategy, operating rhythms, and execution. You’ll tackle ambiguous problems, build practical solutions, and help teams make better decisions with clearer data, better processes, and stronger communication.

This role is ideal for someone with a generalist consulting toolkit and a strong operator mindset—someone who can break down complex business problems, work fluently in data, and build durable systems that teams actually use. You should be equally comfortable developing a recommendation for leadership, building the SQL analysis behind it, and creating the operational mechanism that brings it to life.

In this role, you will:

• Partner with Product leaders and teams to identify strategic and operational opportunities, diagnose root causes, and drive high-impact improvements.
• Lead project-based work across product planning, roadmap processes, goal-setting, prioritization, KPI development, business case creation, and team operating models.
• Build scalable operating systems that improve how product teams work, including planning cadences, intake processes, decision frameworks, launch readiness mechanisms, and performance reviews.
• Translate ambiguous business questions into clear analyses and recommendations using SQL, spreadsheets, dashboards, and structured problem-solving.
• Design and implement practical solutions—not just recommendations—including workflows, tools, documentation, and cross-functional processes.
• Develop executive-ready materials that communicate insights, tradeoffs, and action plans clearly to senior stakeholders.
• Establish and track metrics that help product teams understand performance, execution health, and strategic impact.
• Partner cross-functionally with Engineering, Design, Finance, Customer Success, Sales, and other teams to align on priorities and remove friction.
• Identify opportunities to automate, standardize, or simplify recurring work so teams can move faster with greater consistency.
• Support special projects and critical initiatives across the product organization as business needs evolve.

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

• 2+ years of experience in management consulting, strategy & operations, business operations, product operations, or a similarly analytical and cross-functional role.
• Strong generalist problem-solving skills with experience structuring ambiguous issues, synthesizing inputs, and driving recommendations to action.
• Advanced SQL skills and a high level of comfort working directly with data to answer business and product questions.
• Experience building operational systems, workflows, or internal tools that improve execution and scale across teams.
• Strong analytical foundation with experience in dashboards, KPI design, performance tracking, and operational reporting.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to create clear executive-level narratives and influence stakeholders across functions.
• Proven ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and thrive in fast-moving, evolving environments.
• Strong judgment and attention to detail; able to balance strategic thinking with operational follow-through.
• Highly collaborative, low-ego, and comfortable influencing without direct authority.
• Bachelor’s degree required

Nice to Have

• Experience supporting Product and/or Engineering organizations.
• Background in consulting with exposure to operating model design, process improvement, analytics, or technology-enabled transformation.
• Experience with BI tools, workflow tools, experimentation frameworks, or lightweight automation.
• Familiarity with SaaS, fintech, commerce, hospitality, or restaurant technology.
• Experience translating strategy into durable mechanisms, not just slideware.

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.

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