Senior QA Engineer - Enterprise Drive-thru

About this role

Location: Costa Mesa, California, US - Hybrid #LI-HYBRID / #BI-HYBRID

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.

Toast currently serves hundreds of multi-unit brands, including Caribou Coffee, Choice Hotels, Craveworthy Brands, WaBa Grill, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Papa Gino's & D'Angelo, Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill, and The Human Bean, among others.

As a member of the Enterprise Drive-Thru team, you'll help ensure the quality and reliability of the next generation of drive-thru technology powering some of the largest restaurant brands in the industry. You can read more on our Toast for Enterprise page and Toast Drive-Thru page .

Drive-thrus are rapidly evolving through advancements in software, hardware, automation, and AI-powered technologies. We're looking for a Senior Quality Engineer who thrives in complex environments and is passionate about delivering high-quality products that combine software, hardware, and real-world operational workflows.

In this role, you'll work closely with Product, Engineering, Hardware Operations, Customer Care, and Go-To-Market teams to validate new products from concept through launch. You'll play a critical role in testing and validating everything from AI-powered solutions and drive-thru software to media players, digital menu boards, kiosks, payment devices, and other restaurant technology.

A day in the life (Responsibilities)

• Own test automation strategy. Design, build, and maintain automated testing frameworks and test suites that improve coverage, reduce manual effort, and increase release confidence across software and hardware products.

• Own quality across software and hardware solutions. Develop and execute testing strategies that ensure reliable performance across drive-thru applications, hardware devices, integrations, and customer environments.

• Support zero-to-one product development. Partner closely with Product and Engineering teams throughout discovery, development, pilots, and commercialization efforts to bring new products from concept to scale.

• Test AI-powered and solutions. Validate voice AI, speech recognition workflows, computer vision systems, camera technologies, and other AI-powered products through structured testing, automation, and real-world validation.

• Lead test planning and execution. Create test plans, test cases, regression suites, and release validation processes to ensure product quality and reliability.

• Validate hardware integrations. Test and troubleshoot cameras, media players, digital menu boards, kiosks, payment devices, networking equipment, and other drive-thru technologies.

• Partner directly with customers and field teams. Support pilots, field testing, customer deployments, and issue investigation in real-world restaurant environments.

• Collaborate across teams. Work closely with Product, Engineering, Hardware Operations, and Customer Care to identify risks, resolve issues, and continuously improve quality.

• Leverage AI tools to improve quality. Utilize AI tools to accelerate test creation, debugging, issue investigation, and overall testing efficiency.

• Embrace and advocate for the use of AI tools to accelerate product discovery, streamline execution, and explore new product experiences - helping shape how we build and what we build.

• Organized & Systems-Minded: Proven ability to bring structure to complex workflows, leveraging spreadsheets to organize personal workload, track team deliverables, and streamline processes.

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

• QA and automation experience. 5+ years of experience testing software products, including designing, building, and maintaining automated testing frameworks and test suites across web, mobile, API, hardware-integrated, or distributed systems.

• Programming and scripting experience. Experience developing automated tests and quality tooling using languages such as Java, Kotlin, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, or similar technologies.

• Hardware testing expertise. Strong comfort working with physical devices, hardware integrations, networking, and troubleshooting real-world system issues.

• Test planning and quality ownership. Proven ability to create test plans, regression strategies, release validation processes, and quality standards.

• Technical fluency. Ability to work closely with engineering teams to understand system architecture, APIs, integrations, and technical implementation details.

• Customer-focused mindset. Experience supporting pilots, customer deployments, and validating products in production-like environments.

• Cross-functional collaboration. Strong communication skills and experience partnering with Product, Engineering, Operations, and Customer-facing teams.

What will help you stand out (Nonessential Skills/Nice to Haves):

• Experience testing Voice AI, speech recognition, conversational AI, natural language processing, or voice-enabled applications.

• Experience testing AI, machine learning, computer vision, camera systems, or video analytics products.

• Experience testing hardware and software integrated solutions.

• Familiarity with real-time audio or video streams, camera feeds, microphones, sensor-based systems, or latency-sensitive applications.

• Experience with drive-thru, restaurant, retail, kiosk, or point-of-sale technologies.

• Experience supporting field pilots and customer deployments.

• Experience leveraging AI tools to improve software quality and test automation.

You'll be measured on:

• Product quality. Delivery of reliable, high-quality products with reduced defects and improved customer outcomes.

• Automation coverage. Expansion of automated test coverage and reduction of manual testing effort across products and platforms.

• Release confidence. Improved release quality, reduced production issues, and faster validation cy

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