Principal Technical Program Manager, Toast IQ

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.

Toast IQ is our agentic platform for restaurant operators: a growing set of specialized AI agents that take real work off an operator's plate — driving demand, managing labor, and optimizing the back office. We're launching new agents continuously across multiple lines of business, and the complexity of doing that well, with coherent packaging, consistent quality, and a single platform story, is growing faster than the surface area of the product itself.

This role owns the program that makes it work. You'll design and run the monthly release engine end to end, set and hold the bar on platform readiness, and coordinate go-to-market so naming, packaging, and messaging land as a coherent platform story rather than a dozen separate launches that confuse operators and the field. The goal is to build repeatable operating mechanisms that let Toast move quickly and confidently and that scale as Toast IQ scales.

You'll work across product, engineering, marketing, support, and finance. You won't have direct authority over most of the people you depend on, which means you'll earn influence, make decisions that stick, and serve as an escalation point when things go sideways.

A day in the life (Responsibilities) 

• Design, own, and continuously improve the monthly agent release program — one cadence, one launch process — across all lines of business. Build this as a durable operating mechanism, not a series of one-off coordination efforts.
• Set and hold the platform-readiness bar. Engage credibly with engineering teams on architecture, dependencies, and technical risk. Own the dependency and risk map. Be willing to call a postponement when a product isn't ready — and make that call stick.
• Drive go-to-market coherence across LOBs so naming, packaging, and messaging land as one platform story. Work with PMM and GTM to make sure the field can sell and operators understand what they're getting.
• Instrument launch health and build reporting that matters: what shipped, what slipped, adoption signals, and the blockers that need to be resolved upstream. Feed this signal back to R&D leadership in a form they can act on.
• Operate with high judgment in ambiguous situations. When the governance model doesn't cover a case, make a defensible call and move. Surface the right decisions to leadership with the context they need — don't just escalate problems.
• Establish the operating rhythms, governance structures, and cross-functional alignment mechanisms that keep multiple engineering teams moving toward a shared cadence.

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

• 12+ years of technical program management working directly with software engineering teams.
• Track record of owning cross-functional programs end to end — not just coordinating them — from design through launch, across teams with competing priorities.
• Technical fluency sufficient to engage meaningfully with engineers on architecture, dependencies, and risk: you can identify when a technical assumption is wrong before it becomes a launch problem.
• Demonstrated ability to build repeatable operating models. You've built the system, not just run projects inside someone else's system.
• Experience managing cross-org dependencies and aligning teams you don't control.
• Strong written communication; you can translate complex program status and risk into a clear narrative for senior leadership.

What will help you stand out (Nonessential Skills/Nice to Haves)

• Experience with AI/ML systems, agentic architectures, or applied AI programs.
• Experience standing up a recurring multi-team release cadence on a platform serving multiple product lines.
• Vertical SaaS, SMB, or restaurant/hospitality technology experience.
• Familiarity with usage-based or consumption pricing models.
• BA/BS in a technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience. 

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.