Principal Product Manager, Kitchen Operations & Innovation

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 Kitchen Operations team owns one of Toast's most operationally critical and strategically exciting products: the Kitchen Display System (KDS).

This is a high-ownership, high-visibility role at the intersection of restaurant operations, hardware-software product, and applied AI.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive the KDS product strategy , enterprise workflow depth, data differentiation, SMB attach growth, and the agentic AI roadmap , connecting investments to Toast's kitchen adoption vision and near-term business outcomes including ARR growth, support ticket reduction, and enterprise retention.
• Define where agentic AI creates real value in the kitchen: proactive prep time adjustments based on real-time order load, automatic kitchen configuration changes tied to labor schedules or ordering channel mix, intelligent ticket routing and load balancing , and build the investment case to pursue the highest-leverage bets.
• Own KDS delivery end-to-end, working directly with large restaurant groups to translate complex, high-stakes workflow requirements into scalable product decisions that serve the whole market.
• Lead the KDS kitchen data strategy: define what kitchen efficiency insights should look like for operators at every scale, from API-first analytics for enterprise operators to actionable reporting for SMBs, and sequence the investments to unlock it.
• Shape and validate the business case for the next-generation KDS strategy , the long-horizon bets that drive future growth.

Qualifications

• Proven experience defining and owning product strategy for a complex, operationally critical product , bonus points if it spans hardware and software and/or have experience in food & beverage.
• Creative and strategic: you don't just optimize existing products , you identify the next meaningful bet, make the case for it, and drive it from zero to conviction.
• Curiosity and a point of view on AI and agentic product opportunities in operational environments , you don't need to have shipped an agent, but you should have a clear perspective on where autonomous action creates real value vs. real risk.
• Track record of working directly with enterprise customers, translating nuanced, high-stakes workflow requirements into product decisions that scale well beyond a single logo.
• Strong instincts for the SMB operator: you understand what it means to run a restaurant kitchen without a data analyst, an IT team, or a change management budget , and you can build for that reality.
• Executive presence to drive alignment without authority across engineering, design, enterprise customer success, sales, and product leadership in a high-stakes, cross-functional environment.

Benefits 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.