One application for sodium tert-butoxide is as a non-nucleophilic base. It has been widely used in the Buchwald–Hartwig amination, as in this typical example:
Sodium tert-butoxide is used to prepare tert-butoxide complexes. For example hexa(tert-butoxy)ditungsten(III) is thus obtained by the salt metathesis reaction from a ditungsten heptachloride:
:NaWCl(THF)  +  6 NaOBu-t  →  W(OBu-t)  +  7 NaCl  +  5 THF