About Toast
Our focus is on building the restaurant platform that helps restaurants adapt, take control, and get back to what they do best: building the businesses they love. And because our technology is purpose-built for restaurants, by restaurant people, restaurants can trust that we’ll deliver on their needs for today while investing in experiences that will power their restaurant of the future. We build experiences that help make operating and growing a restaurant and delighting guests easier and scalable. It’s why tens of thousands of restaurant locations love Toast.
About The Roll*
We’re looking for an Associate Director of Product Design with a deep passion for crafting exceptional customer experiences and leading teams to shape the future of our Go To Market experiences at Toast.
In this role, you’ll drive the design, strategy, and vision that help new customers onboard to Toast, get support when they need it, and grow their businesses with us as they increase their adoption and usage of the Toast platform. You’ll also guide the evolution of AI-first experiences that simplify complex setup and workflows and empower operators to make better, faster decisions across the Toast platform.
The ideal candidate is a systems thinker who thrives on solving large-scale design challenges. Your portfolio demonstrates an ability to create intuitive, elegant solutions that balance customer goals with business outcomes. You’re a strong advocate for customer-centered design, comfortable working in ambiguity, and skilled at bringing clarity and alignment across teams. You’ll collaborate closely with product and engineering to define strategy, set a high bar for design craft, and inspire your team to push boundaries.
The right ingredients* (Requirements)
- 5+ years of design leadership experience
- 7+ years in a design role
- 1+ years management experience required
- Design end-to-end product experiences that solve complex problems across multiple surfaces and do right by the customer
- Mentor and inspire a high-performing design team, fostering a culture of creativity, design excellence, and impact
- Lead hiring and growth of the Go To Market design team
- Coach team members to continually improve their craft and deliver an exceptional experience
- Regularly conduct design reviews to obtain feedback, iterating on designs to improve results
- Collaborate cross-functionally with product and engineering to understand users, translating that understanding into strategy that drives customer and business outcomes
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills with an ability to build relationships both within and outside of the product organization
- Lead qualitative and quantitative research to inform design decisions and continuously improve product experiences
- Enduring sense of curiosity with a desire to continuously learn and evolve
- Hands-on proficiency in Figma and other prototyping and design collaboration tools, including platforms like V0, magic patterns, Claude code etc.
- Ability to work core EST hours to collaborate with team members
Special Sauce* (Nonessential Skills/Nice to Haves)
- Restaurant Passion: First hand experience and enthusiasm for the restaurant industry and designing impactful solutions for its unique challenges is something we value highly
- Past Experiences: Experience and passion for designing for go to market motions, product led growth and customer support (chat bots, agent tooling, phone IVRs etc) is a plus.
- AI-first: As a design team, we’re forward thinking. We bring an AI-first mentality as we design innovative experiences for our customers. Prior experience with this transformational technology is a huge plus.
About You
You are a dynamic leader with proven impact in previous roles who is ready and willing to take on new challenges! You’re excited to join the remotely distributed group of product designers, user researchers, design ops leaders, and product managers that compose the Toast Design team. You embody the tenets that drive Toast’s Design practice:
- You have a founder’s mentality: and exhibit ownership of outcomes over outputs. You define and track success within the areas you own.
- You lift others up: and work to exhibit true leadership. You build a productive and psychologically safe culture within your team.
- You drive action through influence: and appreciate that building trusting and productive relationships with those around you is integral to driving action. You build strong relationships to enact influence within your leadership partners.
- You build strong perspectives: and guide yourself and your teams to make good decisions quickly and often. You leverage multiple inputs to make informed decisions and build increased confidence in your leadership decision making over time.
- You raise the bar: and commit to continually improving the skills of those you manage. You set a high bar for quality within your team.
Our Spread* of Total Rewards
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.
*Bread puns encouraged but not required
The base salary range for this role is listed below. The starting salary will be determined based on skills and experience. In addition to base salary, our total rewards components include cash compensation (overtime, bonus/commissions, if eligible), benefits, and equity (if eligible).
How Toast Uses AI in its Hiring Process
Throughout the hiring process, our goal is to get to know you. We use AI tools to support our recruiters and interviewers with tasks like note-taking, summarization, and documentation of interviews to ensure they can be fully focused on your conversation. All hiring decisions are made by people.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is Baked into our Recipe for Success
At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we thrive. The restaurant industry is one of the most diverse, and we embrace that diversity with authenticity, inclusivity, respect, and humility. By embedding these principles into our culture and design, we create equitable opportunities for all and raise the bar in delivering exceptional experiences.
We Thrive Together
We embrace a hybrid work model that fosters in-person collaboration while valuing individual needs. Our goal is to build a strong culture of connection as we work together to empower the restaurant community. To learn more about how we work globally and regionally, check out: https://careers.toasttab.com/locations-toast.
Apply today!
Toast is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive hiring process. As part of this commitment, we strive to provide reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities to enable them to access the hiring process. If you need an accommodation to access the job application or interview process, please contact candidateaccommodations@toasttab.com.
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For roles in the United States, it is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.