Principal HR Business Partner

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. As a Principal People Success Partner (more commonly referred to as "HR Business Partner"), you'll be at the intersection of business strategy and talent execution. Reporting to the Director of People Success (GTM), this role will primarily focus on the core Sales organization while connecting the dots across Sales, Marketing, Enterprise, and Onboarding. 

This role will operate as a senior-level individual contributor navigating a high-growth, matrixed environment. Acting as an enterprise connector, this role will drive cross-functional talent strategies across Sales and Marketing while influencing senior leaders to align talent priorities with broader business goals. Additionally, this role will lead complex organizational health strategies and act as a systemic thinker, partnering with other People Success Partners (PSPs) to shape and elevate the overarching talent density of our business units.

A day in the life (Responsibilities):

• Strategic Advisory & Execution: Partner directly with GTM VPs and leadership teams to align cross-functional talent strategies with long-term business goals.
• Executive Coaching: Serve as a "Culture Mirror" and trusted coach for senior leadership, providing courageous feedback on team effectiveness and leadership capability.
• People Process Architect: Lead the multi-year transformation of our global Sales organization, standardizing excellence in hiring, coaching, and performance culture.
• AI & Scalability Pioneer: Proactively experiment with AI technology to automate people processes and evolve AE attrition models from "backward-looking" to "predictive".
• Organizational Health & Design: Diagnose current health and design future-ready structures, focusing on role scoping, spans/layers, and territory-driven retention.
• COE Collaboration: Serve as a primary contact and partner for Center of Excellence (COE) teams, ensuring global programs (such as annual review cycles) are scalable for GTM without creating bespoke solutions.
• Operational Detective: Marry quantitative trends (attrition trackers, quota attainment) with qualitative insights to pressure-test root causes of business gaps.

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

• Strategic Execution: 10+ years of HRBP experience, specifically supporting high-pressure Sales and Marketing organizations in a hyper-growth SaaS environment.
• Sales Fluency: Deep understanding of "classic sales" mechanics, including accelerators, booked vs. live "haircuts," and sales leadership scorecards.
• The AI "Builder" Mindset: A proactive interest in adopting and experimenting with AI to solve for scale.
• Comfort using data to identify gaps and drive solutions, with the ability to marry quantitative trends (attrition trackers, quota attainment) with qualitative leadership coaching.
• Programmatic Heft: Proven success leading "Big Rock" initiatives.
• Communication & Influence: Exceptional ability to influence through complex/matrix structures and tell the truth to senior leadership, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Why Toast?

This is a meaningful opportunity to shape the future of People Technology at Toast during an important phase of growth and transformation. You will inherit a talented team and a critical platform ecosystem, with the opportunity to bring clarity, structure, innovation, and scale to how Toast supports employees, managers, candidates, and People teams.

In this role, you will lead a mission-critical function, build a strategic roadmap, reduce tech debt, simplify systems experiences, strengthen vendor partnerships, and help Toast get the most value from its People Technology investments.

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

#LI-HYBRID

The base salary range for this role is listed below. The starting salary will be determined based on skills, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, our total rewards components include cash compensation (overtime, bonus/commissions if eligible), equity, and benefits. You can learn more about how we align pay with local labor markets in our Geographic Pay Zone Philosophy.

Pay Range $159,000—$254,000 USD

How 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. To learn more:

Our Approach to Hybrid Working

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 hospitality community, regardless of location. Please visit the Locations page on our career site to learn more about our in-office expectations by region: 

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:

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 View email address on click.appcast.io.

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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.