Associate Product Designer - Toast Retail

About Toast

Our focus is on building the platform that helps our customers adapt, take control, and get back to what they do best: building the businesses they love. And because our technology is purpose-built for the industries we serve, customers can trust that we’ll deliver on their needs for today while investing in experiences that will power their future. We build experiences that help make operating and growing a business and delighting their customers easier and scalable. It’s why tens of thousands of locations love Toast.

About the Opportunity

We are seeking a skilled Associate Product Designer with a strong portfolio and a focus on exceptional execution/craft/UI design to shape the future of Toast's expansive inventory + item management experience. This role involves designing for the unique needs of our diverse customer base, including restaurants, hybrid models, convenience stores, bottle shops, grocery stores, gas stations, and beyond.

Team and Impact

You will join a passionate team dedicated to driving the consistency, integrity, strategy, and vision of Toast's next-generation product experience. This team is located remotely in the U.S.

You will be responsible for helping to deliver inventory + item management functionality that benefits both our Retail and Restaurant customers and scaling these capabilities as Toast expands into new markets.

A day in the life (Responsibilities)

In this role, you will be a central collaborator within a team of designers, product managers, and engineers. Your focus will be on assisting more senior designers on sophisticated, inventory-centric capabilities such as:

• Refining the Toast UX so non-restaurant customers feel at home
• AI-supported workflows across product features
• Native mobile inventory solutions
• Onboarding flows that accelerate time-to-value for our customers
• A retail and fuel mode on our POS devices

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

• Experience (1-2 years): Demonstrated ability to deliver designs grounded in a design system, process feedback with ease, push for cleaner, easier-to-use UIs and work well with triad partners and design team members.
• AI Integration & Judgment: Experience leveraging AI tools to enhance the product design process. Crucially, the ability to discern valuable AI integration from mere 'hype.'
• Core UX/UI Expertise: Solid understanding of UX principles and best practices for both web and native mobile applications, along with a strong grasp of platform-specific UX and UI patterns.
• Collaboration & Communication: Good communication skills coupled with a proactive mindset for sharing work early and often.
• Design Tool Proficiency: Proficient in design software (preferably Figma), including maintaining clean files and delivering pixel-perfect final UI designs for handoff (to a developer or an AI prototyping tool).
• Adaptability & Feedback: Able to take feedback constructively and pivot quickly when necessary.
• User Empathy: A strong ability to understand and empathize with users, designing digital experiences that delight and create a sense of accomplishment, especially within stressful or monotonous workflows.
• Design Systems: Familiarity with corporate design systems, knowing how to apply them appropriately, and possessing the judgment to push beyond them when innovation requires it.
• Customer Engagement: Willingness to directly engage with customers to gather feedback and generate ideas for advancing product features.

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

• Design system experience (including creation and maintenance)
• Expertise in fast prototyping using tools such as
  1. Figma Make
  2. Magic Patterns
  3. v0
• Prior experience in a startup environment or on 'zero-to-one' projects

About You

You are a dynamic team player with proven impact in previous roles who is ready and willing to take on new challenges! You’re excited to join the remotely distributed Toast Retail team which consists of highly motivated and experienced engineers, product leads and designers. You embody the tenets that drive Toast’s Design practice:

1. You have a founder’s mentality: and exhibit ownership of outcomes over outputs. You own the quality and outcomes associated with your work, as well as additional areas your work touches.
2. You lift others up: and recognize you don’t have to be a manager to engage and exhibit true leadership. You offer help and guidance across all different collaborators you work with.
3. 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 with all key stakeholders of the area of the business you work within.
4. You build strong perspectives: and guide yourself and your teams to make good decisions quickly and often. You collaboratively make well informed decisions by synthesizing a wide variety of data sources.

You raise the bar: and commit to continually improving the technical skills relevant to your role. You actively engage in your own learning and development and deeply internalize learnings and lessons from your project work.