Software Engineer Intern Summer 2025

As a Software Engineer Intern at Toast, you will engage in a variety of responsibilities, including working in small teams to develop, maintain, and optimize scalable web and mobile applications. You’ll also be involved in tasks such as implementing and testing code, diagnosing performance issues, and contributing to product design discussions.

Toast requires candidates for the Software Engineer Intern position to be currently enrolled in an academic program. A strong desire to learn and an understanding of software development principles are essential. Knowledge in areas such as Java development, mobile development, and machine learning is a plus.

The Toast engineering team utilizes a diverse technology stack that includes Java and Kotlin for backend services, React for front-end applications, and various AWS services such as ECS, DynamoDB, and Aurora. Interns will have the chance to work with a rich set of modern technologies including containerization, RESTful microservices, and big data tools.

The Software Engineer Intern position at Toast is based in Boston, MA. This allows interns to collaborate closely with their teams and mentors, fostering a supportive and interactive learning environment while contributing to real-world projects.

During your internship at Toast, you’ll gain hands-on experience in software development, including coding, debugging, and optimizing applications. You will also enhance your knowledge in areas such as cloud services, machine learning, and UI/UX design, preparing you for future roles in the tech industry.

When discussing your project, focus on your role, the technologies you used, and any challenges you faced. Highlight how you applied Java to solve a problem, improved functionality, or optimized performance, and emphasize the outcomes and what you learned along the way.

Explain your debugging process step-by-step. Discuss how you utilize tools and techniques like logging, breakpoints, and manual testing to identify issues. Illustrate with an example where a systematic approach helped you resolve a bug efficiently.

Talk about relevant projects where you utilized these technologies. Highlight specific features you developed or any frameworks you used (like React or Angular) and how these projects improved your understanding of front-end development best practices.

Describe RESTful services as an architectural style for designing networked applications. Emphasize their importance in enabling communication between client and server in a stateless manner, and how they contribute to scalable and maintainable systems.

Discuss your understanding of machine learning basics, such as supervised vs. unsupervised learning, and how you’ve applied these in your studies or projects. Give a brief example of a potential situation at Toast where machine learning could improve functionality or efficiency.

Share a specific example emphasizing your collaborative nature. Describe your contributions, any leadership roles you took on, and how you helped resolve conflicts or challenged perspectives effectively to ensure project success.

Discuss techniques you use for prioritization, such as Eisenhower Box or agile methodologies. Provide a brief scenario where these techniques helped you manage your time and meet deadlines, ensuring project goals were met.

Talk about best practices like input validation, using prepared statements for SQL queries, and regularly updating dependencies to address known vulnerabilities. Illustrate with examples where you’ve implemented these security measures in past projects.

Express your enthusiasm for Toast's mission to empower restaurants through technology. Discuss how the culture of innovation, hands-on experience, and diverse tech stack resonates with your career goals and interests.

Share the resources you use, such as online courses, tech blogs, coding forums, or podcasts, and emphasize how you apply this knowledge to improve your skills and knowledge in software engineering.