Principal Product Analytics Engineer at Toast

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. We are expanding our Product Analytics function and are looking for a Principal Product Analytics Engineer to define and build the technical foundation of our product analytics ecosystem. In this role, you will own the architecture for how product usage data is captured, structured, and made available for analysis across Toast’s ecosystem of mobile apps, web applications, Android OS software and hardware devices. A day in the life (Responsibilities) You will design systems and frameworks that power product telemetry, experimentation, analytics datasets, and AI-driven insights to enable product teams to understand user behavior and measure product impact. Working closely with Product, Engineering, Design, Data Platform, and Data Infrastructure teams, you will ensure product data is reliable, scalable, and built to support data-driven product development. You will use AI to deliver and improve the speed of insights into the product development lifecycle. The Product Analytics team sits inside of R&D Operations, which enables Toast’s product, design and engineering teams to build great products efficiently and at scale by providing the processes, insights and strategies to drive meaningful impact. • Lead the architecture and design of Toast’s product analytics data ecosystem, spanning product telemetry, event pipelines, analytics-ready datasets, and semantic views. • Establish scalable data models that support product analytics, experimentation, executive reporting, and AI-powered insights. • Design frameworks for core analytics concepts such as sessions, identity resolution, feature usage tracking, and lifecycle metrics. • Develop and maintain reliable analytics layers of the product data warehouse using modern modeling frameworks. • Create reusable analytics datasets, standardized metrics, and canonical models used across product teams. • Implement automated data validation, monitoring, and quality controls to ensure reliable product data. • Partner with engineering teams to define and enforce product telemetry and instrumentation best practices. • Establish governance processes that ensure consistent metric definitions and high-quality data across domains. • Partner with analysts, data scientists and product managers to ensure the data foundation supports experimentation, dashboards, analytical studies, and AI workflows. • Serve as the technical authority on product data architecture, reliability and governance. • Mentor team members to help elevate the organization’s ability to leverage product data effectively. What you'll need to thrive (Requirements) • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field with a minimum of 12 years of experience in Data Engineering, Product Analytics, Data Analysis, Data Science or related field; or a Master’s degree with 8 years of related experience; or a PhD with 5 years of experience; or equivalent experience. • Experience working with large scaled product data from source to warehouse, specifically with web & mobile apps, Android OS software and devices. • Deep experience designing product analytics data infrastructure including schema design, ETL/pipelines, warehouses, and designing datasets for AI-driven analytics. • Extensive hands-on experience with Amazon S3 Data Lake, Airflow, dbt, Snowflake, Hex, Sigma, Amplitude, Python or similar tools. Expert level SQL and modeling skills, and experience with AI tools like Claude, Cursor, Chatgpt, MCP. • Proven ability to translate stakeholder needs and requirements into deployed scalable data architecture. • Experience supporting data foundations for experimentation and A/B testing measurement frameworks. • Strong cross-functional leadership with experience driving alignment across Product, Engineering, and Data teams. • Excellent communication skills, demonstrated through documentation and presentation to stakeholders and senior leadership. • A self-starter mindset, excited to build something from scratch and evolve it over time. 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 [Upgrade to PRO to see link] 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). Pay Range$195,000—$312,000 USDHow 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: [Upgrade to PRO to see link] 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 [Upgrade to PRO to see contact]. ------ 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.