Staff Engineer, Cloud Security

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.

The Product & Platform Security team at Toast protects the cloud infrastructure and services that restaurants depend on every day. We are looking for a Staff Engineer, Cloud Security to expand the scope and coverage of our cloud security capabilities. You will join an existing cloud security team and take a role in setting direction for how Toast secures its cloud environments. This is a hands-on role with technical leadership responsibilities: you will build and operate security tooling and controls yourself, while also shaping strategy, mentoring teammates, and influencing the roadmaps of engineering teams across R&D.

Our footprint is primarily AWS. You will work closely with Platform and Infrastructure teams in R&D, and with Defense & Response and other Security Engineering teams within Trust & Security.

• →Own and operate our Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), including tuning, coverage, integrations, and turning findings into prioritized, actionable work for engineering teams.
• →Lead cloud security posture management (CSPM) across our AWS organization and accounts, defining standards and measuring adherence over time.
• →Drive identity and access management improvements, including least privilege, role and permission design, and reducing standing access.
• →Secure our container environments, from image and workload security to cluster configuration and runtime protection.
• →Build guardrails and secure defaults into infrastructure as code and deployment pipelines, so that teams get secure configurations by default rather than through review.
• →Perform secure architecture reviews and threat modeling for new and existing cloud services and platform capabilities.
• →Partner with our SOC on cloud detection coverage, logging, and investigation readiness.
• →Run and improve cloud vulnerability and misconfiguration remediation programs, working with engineering owners to drive risk down.
• →Participate in security incident response, including on-call coverage, and lead the cloud side of investigations and follow-up work.
• →Set the multi-year direction for cloud security at Toast, and mentor and uplevel other engineers on the team.
• →Build trusted relationships with Platform, Infrastructure, and product engineering leaders, and influence their priorities through data and clear risk communication.

• 8+ years of experience in security engineering, infrastructure, or software engineering, with significant time focused on cloud security.
• Deep, hands-on experience securing AWS environments at scale, including IAM, Organizations, networking, logging, and core security services.
• Experience deploying and operating cloud security tooling, such as CNAPP or CSPM platforms (for example Orca, Wiz, or Upwind).
• Experience with container and Kubernetes security (for example EKS).
• Experience performing threat modeling and security architecture reviews for cloud services and platform capabilities.
• Experience responding to security incidents in cloud environments.
• Proficiency with infrastructure as code (for example Terraform) and in at least one programming language used for automation (for example Python or Go).
• A track record of leading cross-team technical initiatives and influencing engineering teams without direct authority.
• History of setting technical direction for a security domain, including a multi-year roadmap and the decisions behind it
• Clear written and verbal communication, including explaining risk and tradeoffs to engineers and leaders.

• Experience with GCP, Azure, or other cloud platforms.
• Experience with cloud detection engineering or incident response in cloud environments.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks relevant to payments and SaaS, such as PCI DSS or SOC 2.
• Relevant certifications, such as AWS Certified Security Specialty or CCSP.
• Experience mentoring engineers or growing a security function.

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.

At Toast, our employees are our secret ingredient—when they thrive, we thrive. The restaurant industry brings together people with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, and we value that same breadth at Toast. We strive to build a culture grounded in authenticity, respect, and humility, where every Toaster has a real opportunity to grow, contribute, and do their best work—raising the bar in delivering exceptional experiences for our customers and each other.

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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