Toast Careers

We caught up with Maria Loughlin, Toast’s SVP of Engineering, to learn more about her career path, what she’s most passionate about at Toast, and advice she has for engineers considering joining our R&D team. Learn more below!

Tell us about your career path and what brought you to Toast. 

Growing up, I lived in County Cork, Ireland. I was the kid who loved puzzles, science, and math, and it led me to study electrical engineering in college. My first job, in Galway Ireland, offered an opportunity to move to Massachusetts, where I transitioned from an electronics to a software career. Over time, I moved from QA, to hands-on developer, to team lead, and eventually to management roles. It's been an interesting ride!

What has been constant is my quest to learn and grow in companies with different technologies, scale, and market focus. I’ve worked at startups and at enterprises on content publishing, workforce management, medical data analysis, and security. Prior to Toast, I was the VP of Engineering at two companies, one for banking fraud detection (Memento Security) and one for application security (Veracode). This whole journey brought me to Toast! 

At Toast, our mission is to empower the restaurant community to delight their guests, do what they love, and thrive. We provide solutions that help restaurateurs run their operations, manage their employees, and engage with their guests. 

This is powered by a set of technologies - hardware and software - that is specifically designed for restaurants. We support hosts and servers in the front-of-house, the expeditor in the kitchen, the manager running payroll and inventory, and even the partners who work with restaurants for food supply and delivery. We have an ever-increasing set of products for guests, so you and I can order online, pick up curbside, and/or pay right at the table.

As I mentioned above, I’ve worked across many different industries. Working at Toast is unique for many reasons, but especially because the hospitality industry is so relatable. We all love to eat restaurant food, to experience the restaurant setting, and to enjoy the companionship of friends and family. While the technology is exciting, the fact that this is serving a really important need is a meaningful aspect of my journey.

How are your engineering teams set up? 

Within Toast, we organize around Lines of Business (LoBs) which focus on the “jobs to be done” of different restaurant personas. The Commerce LoB serves the restaurant owners, operators, and employees. The Guest LoB focuses on patrons of restaurants, simplifying how consumers interact with restaurants, and how restaurants interact with consumers. Likewise, the FinTech, Employee, and Supplier LoBs focus on payments and banking services, restaurant employees, and the back-of-house accounting staff. Engineering, Product Management, and Design live within the Research and Development (R&D) department. We work collaboratively in agile teams to prioritize restaurant needs and to deliver for our customers. 

We have a huge breadth of technology. While we’re known as a restaurant tech company, we have a strong FinTech team building innovative FinTech solutions for restaurants and restaurant employees. 

We also develop mobile applications for restaurants and guests. The Point of Sale (POS) app runs on restaurant terminals, kiosks, kitchen displays, and handhelds to take orders, send them to the kitchen, process payments, and much more. Most of the hardware is custom-designed and built by Toast to exactly meet restaurant needs. As a restaurant guest, you can download the Toast App from the App Store to order online, redeem loyalty and gift cards, and have a great dine-in experience with Scan to Pay. We’re constantly innovating to make the experience more delightful. 

Whether you like scaling complex infrastructure or innovating rapidly on new UIs, hardware, payments, quality, documentation, and more - there’s a role for you at Toast! 

Tell us about Toast’s culture.

The Toast culture is unique and one that I love! We’re united by a clear mission (to help restaurants thrive) and a set of core values that include Driven with Purpose and Lead with Humility. We are publicly traded company, but we have maintained the energy of a "scaling startup.” Our founders are actively engaged in the business and we stay close to our restaurant customers. Given our scale, we can couple that energy with the security, enablement, stability, and support of a larger company. 

At Toast, we value collaboration and a One Team approach to problem-solving. Our employees know that there are people around who care about them personally as well as care about their careers. 

I would encourage anybody interested in Toast to explore further. It's a great time to join Toast. We're market leaders in the digital transformation of the hospitality industry, a once in a lifetime opportunity. If you're motivated for impact, and if you want to build your career on something that has a strong and leading edge “changing-the-world” feel about it, consider Toast.

Maria Loughlin is now a member of the Toast alumni community. We greatly appreciate their many contributions to and lasting impact on Toast!