Gusto has been growing the small business economy for 15+ years. Not with just great technology, but with heart. We serve 500K+ businesses with payroll, HR, benefits, compliance, and more. 

Small businesses are the backbone of the economy, and we're the team in their corner.

Gusto

Health Insurance

Equity / Stock Options

401k / Pension

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve.

 
All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our

 
AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.

As a Staff Engineer on the Developer Productivity - AI Developer Tools team, you will be the architectural anchor shaping the AI platform that accelerates engineering across Gusto. You will redefine how our entire engineering organization builds, tests, and ships software by architecting a highly secure, context-aware, "AI-native" development lifecycle.

Your mission is to eliminate developer friction through AI tools, multi-agent systems, and intelligent automation. Whether you are building bespoke internal coding assistants, automating sprawling codebase refactors, or deploying AI to self-heal CI/CD pipelines, your work will directly multiply the velocity of hundreds of builders. Help us drive developer productivity by building the next generation of AI tools.

The AI Developer Tools team is a specialized team within Developer Productivity. We believe AI is the next great leap in software craftsmanship. Our goal is to provide every builder at Gusto with a suite of "superpowers" tools that deeply understand our codebase and absorb operational toil so engineers can focus on creative problem-solving. We treat our fellow engineers as our primary customers, prioritizing developer experiences that are not just powerful, but absolutely delightful to use.

Architect AI Core Infrastructure: Design, scale, and maintain the internal platform and APIs that integrate LLMs into the developer workflow, with a heavy focus on autonomous agents, custom retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and smart context-delivery systems.

Drive Technical Leadership & Vision: Establish engineering best practices for building with AI at Gusto, including robust evaluation frameworks (evals), guardrails for code safety, and strategies for optimizing model latency and token spend.

Collaborate & Evangelize: Partner closely with product engineering teams to uncover systemic friction points, and collaborate with core Infrastructure and Security teams to ensure all AI tooling is scalable, compliant, and secure.

Optimize Feedback Loops: Identify and eliminate critical bottlenecks in the local-to-production lifecycle at scale across Gusto.

Maintain Enterprise Reliability: Treat AI infrastructure with production-grade rigor. Monitor system health, diagnose complex integration or networking issues, and mitigate model drift or downtime.

8+ Years of Systems Expertise: You are a seasoned engineer who is highly comfortable navigating massive, complex codebases and delivering production-grade, distributed software.

Production AI Experience: You have a proven track record of moving AI beyond prototypes. You possess a deep understanding of prompt engineering, fine-tuning, RAG architectures, and orchestrating multi-agent workflows.

Developer-First Mindset: You are passionate about Developer Experience and Productivity. You intuitively understand what makes an internal tool frictionless, fast, and empowering for other engineers.

Strategic Execution: You don't just build wrappers; you think deeply about data privacy, security, cost management, and systemic reliability when deploying AI solutions.

Exceptional Communication: You can seamlessly translate bleeding-edge AI capabilities into clear, actionable infrastructure strategies, mentoring junior engineers and aligning cross-functional stakeholders along the way.

Working as a Team: You work across team boundaries and bring other teams and groups along with you towards our strategic vision.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $180,000/yr to $200,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, $220,000/yr to $245,000/yr for San Francisco, New York & Seattle. Stock equity is additional. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 

per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale.

Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas. 

When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto. 

Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out 

 and a member of our team will get in touch with you.

Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our 

Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to 

Staff / Principal Level

AI Proficiency

Communication

Gusto is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the AI Developer Tools team to architect an AI-native development lifecycle. The role focuses on building internal coding assistants and autonomous agents using LLMs, RAG, and multi-agent workflows to increase engineering velocity. Responsibilities include designing AI core infrastructure and optimizing developer feedback loops.

Engineering

Denver, CO;New York, NY;Atlanta, GA;Seattle, WA;United States - Remote

United States - Atlanta, GA - Remote

United States - Denver, CO

United States - New York, NY

United States - Remote

United States - Seattle, WA - Remote

Staff Software Engineer,  AI Developer Tools

Full Time

Competitive compensation

As a Staff Engineer, you’ll play a significant role in building new products and scaling existing ones to further evolve Gusto’s product offerings. Your work will focus on improving our customers’ financial tools, helping them spend less time managing their finances and more time focusing on their businesses. You will collaborate with a team of highly skilled professionals, contributing engineering expertise throughout the product development lifecycle—from ideation and design to architecture, development, release, and post-release monitoring and scaling.

At Gusto, the Business Money team is on a mission to support small and medium-sized businesses by providing financial tools that help them manage cash flow and run their businesses with confidence. The suite of products we own includes (but is not limited to) Bill Pay, Invoicing, Expenses, Payroll Bridge (Payroll Line of Credit to fund payroll), and a Cash Flow Dashboard that offers a comprehensive view of business finances.

Our team is relatively small but operates at a fast, startup-like pace. In less than two years, the team has effectively created a new business vertical called Gusto Money, delivering multiple large scale 0-1 products that help small businesses have more control over their business finances and greater confidence in making financial decisions. As we continue to expand our offerings across business finance, accounting, and cash flow management, this is a great opportunity to apply your skills and help shape the future of Gusto Money.

Build products & services and scale the platform that powers business money and accounting experiences at Gusto

Take ownership of projects, ensuring they meet high standards of quality and performance

Adopt the latest best practices for using AI technologies across all aspects of product development

Collaborate on complex and ambiguous problems with partnerships from Engineering, Product Management, Design, Data Science, Compliance, Operations, and other cross-functional teams

Engage in a highly supportive environment working with others to drive productivity and innovation

Help drive the product development process from concept to launch

8+ years of professional software development experience

Experience architecting, building, and testing large-scale and resilient distributed systems and/or software platforms

Maximizes the use of AI tooling while guiding the team in adopting modern AI practices

Comfortable dealing with ambiguity and working with quick iteration cycles

Ability to communicate technical complexity and help facilitate informed tradeoffs

Willingness to collaborate across different functions

An aptitude and interest in bringing clarity and simplicity to complex and ambiguous problems

Experience as a technical lead, leading the work of multiple engineers on multi-quarter projects

Experience in the Fintech industry building scalable backend systems to power financial services and products

Experience with accounting, bookkeeping, tax, or financial reporting systems and a strong understanding of accounting workflows

Familiarity with small business accounting or tax domains, including concepts such as ledgers, reconciliations, financial statements, payroll accounting, or tax compliance

Ruby/Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, React, Typescript, AWS

Please note that a two day travel to a Gusto office for onboarding is required for this position.

 If you have any questions regarding this requirement, please share with your recruiter.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $163,000–$204,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $197,000–$247,000 for San Francisco & New York. Stock equity is additional. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Travel Required

Experience

Gusto is hiring a Staff Engineer for the Business Money team to develop and scale financial tools for small businesses. The role focuses on architecting resilient distributed systems and leveraging AI to enhance cash flow management products. Primary technologies include Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, and AWS.

San Francisco, CA;New York, NY;Ontario, CAN - Remote;Toronto, Ontario, CAN - Remote;United States - Remote

Canada - Ontario - Remote

Canada - Toronto, Ontario - Remote

United States - San Francisco, CA

Staff Software Engineer, Business Money

Business Money Engineering

AI Tools Access

The Pricing & Packaging team is looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer and Tech Lead to drive the technical direction of Gusto’s internal Commerce Platform. You’ll own the architecture and delivery of systems that power how Gusto packages, prices, and delivers its products to over 500,000 small businesses nationwide. In this role, you’ll partner closely with product, data science, and cross-functional engineering teams to build reliable, scalable platform infrastructure that enables Gusto’s growth. If you’re energized by high-stakes platform work at the intersection of engineering excellence and real business impact, this role is for you.

The Pricing & Packaging team sits at the heart of Gusto’s Commerce infrastructure, serving as the single source of truth for all products, bundles, add-ons, subscriptions, pricing, promotions, and discounts across Gusto’s first-party customer experience. The team owns and operates Gusto’s internal Commerce Platform  including the product catalog, promotion engine, subscription, pricing experimentation platform, and entitlement services that enable Growth and other teams to bring Gusto’s offerings to market effectively. We’re a collaborative team of engineers and a data scientist working on quarterly goals and monthly milestones, with a strong emphasis on platform reliability, adoption, and business impact. Our work directly shapes how Gusto’s 500,000+ small business customers access the payroll, benefits, and HR tools they rely on every day.

Lead technical design and architecture for the Commerce Platform including the product catalog, promotion engine, and subscription and entitlement systems, ensuring services are reliable, performant, and meet defined SLOs. 

Partner with product management and cross-functional engineering teams (Growth, Onboarding, Expansion) to define the platform’s technical roadmap and drive adoption across Gusto.

Drive end-to-end delivery of complex, ambiguous projects: from requirements gathering and technical scoping through implementation, rollout, and post-launch iteration. 

Mentor and grow engineers on the team through design reviews, code reviews, and hands-on technical coaching, fostering a culture of craftsmanship and continuous improvement. 

Leverage AI tools such as code assistants, automated testing, and data-driven diagnostics — to accelerate engineering velocity and establish team-wide best practices for AI-augmented development.

Own and improve platform observability, reliability, and performance: define and track SLOs, lead incident response, and drive blameless post-mortems to lasting resolution. 

Collaborate with Gusto’s marketing and business teams to evolve the self-serve system for managing products, bundles, promotions, and discounts, enabling faster time-to market for new offerings.

10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a tech lead or staff engineer role setting technical direction for a team.

Has achieved mastery in at least one programming language (e.g. Ruby, Java, Python, Go)

Deep experience building and operating large-scale backend platform systems ideally in commerce, billing, subscription management, pricing and packaging domain

Strong command of distributed systems, API design, and service reliability practices, with experience defining and meeting SLOs in production environments.

Demonstrated ability to work effectively with AI tools (such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, or similar) in day-to-day engineering, and a growth mindset toward evolving AI capabilities in the team’s workflow

Proven track record of leading cross-functional technical initiatives, influencing without authority, and aligning engineering, product, and business stakeholders around a shared technical vision

Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to make complex technical concepts accessible to both engineers and non-technical partners.

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $189,000/yr to $236,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $223,000/yr to $278,000/yr for San Francisco, Seattle & New York. Stock equity is additional. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Education

Cross Functional Leadership

Gusto is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical architecture of its internal Commerce Platform. The role focuses on building scalable systems for pricing, packaging, and subscriptions using distributed systems and API design. The engineer will mentor team members and integrate AI tools to accelerate development velocity.

Senior Staff Software Engineer - Pricing and Packaging

We're looking for an experienced engineer with deep expertise in distributed data systems to shape the future of Gusto's storage layer. You'll manage complex migrations, architect high-scale systems, and set standards for automation, resiliency, and security. This is a high-impact role where you'll implement distributed database solutions that enable Gusto's continued growth and scale.

The Datastores Infrastructure Engineering team designs, builds, and operates the data platforms that power Gusto's product: MySQL, Postgres, Redis, Kafka, and S3. We ensure our infrastructure is consistent, reliable, and ready to support Gusto's growing needs. As we transition to self-hosted distributed databases, the team is focused on reducing blast radius, improving operational resilience, and enabling sustainable scale.

Architect, deploy, and own the full lifecycle of distributed database systems (TiDB) on Kubernetes at scale, ensuring high availability, data consistency, and operational excellence

Coordinate complex, zero-downtime migrations from monolithic to distributed architectures, including vertical sharding to isolate Product Services

Define and drive efficiency improvements across the storage infrastructure through query optimization, caching strategies, and workload management

Define standards and build reliable automation to ensure data consistency, integrity, and security across distributed systems

Continuously improve operational excellence by reducing on-call burden through sustainable, long-term solutions

Partner with product engineering teams and technical collaborators to enable rapid and reliable product development

Mentor engineers across the Datastores Infrastructure team on best practices for operating complex, self-hosted distributed systems, actively developing our collective operational expertise

12+ years of software engineering experience building and scaling large-scale infrastructure systems

Hands-on experience building and operating distributed databases on Kubernetes (strongly preferred: TiDB; alternatively: CockroachDB, Vitess, Citus, or similar solutions)

Deep expertise in distributed data systems including horizontal sharding, partitioning strategies, and distributed transaction management

Proven experience coordinating complex, zero-downtime migrations affecting production systems at scale

5+ years of AWS experience with RDS, Aurora, caching systems (Redis/ValKey), streaming platforms (Kafka), and infrastructure optimization at scale

Strong communication skills with the ability to simplify technical complexity and collaborate on technical direction across teams

Curiosity and ability to operate in an AI-native environment, leveraging AI tooling to enhance infrastructure operations, driving improvements in  query optimization, performance evaluation, and infrastructure automation

Bonus: Experience with service extraction and vertical sharding from monolithic architectures

Bonus: Experience working with Ruby on Rails or similar MVC frameworks at scale

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $200,000-$230,000 /yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $230,000-$270,000 /yr for San Francisco, Seattle & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

On-call rotation

Work Authorization

Gusto is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for Database Infrastructure to architect and operate distributed data systems. The role involves managing high-scale migrations to TiDB on Kubernetes and optimizing storage layers using AWS, MySQL, and PostgreSQL to ensure operational resilience and scalability.

Staff Software Engineer, Database Infrastructure

We're looking for seasoned full-stack software engineers to join the teams behind Gusto's product platforms — the shared systems that our product teams build upon — to serve small business owners every day.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll operate across the full lifecycle of foundational systems: shaping architecture early in the design process, building self-service internal features and APIs, and owning their performance long after launch. That means engineering the core business engine, enabling product teams with reliable backend services, and setting the engineering standard for those around you.

If you're drawn to work that combines technical craft with real-world impact — helping power the livelihoods of millions using Gusto products — join us!



 Gusto core platform services – communications, reporting, dashboards, access, workflows, risk, payments, and compliance capabilities, among others

Mentor other engineers to help solve some of the hardest technical problems out there in very complex domains and at a large scale

Help scale one of the largest Ruby/Rails and Javascript/React applications in the world

Collaborate with our Product Engineering, Product Management, Data, and Design teams to understand customer pain points, come up with solutions, and then 

Build platforms that engineering teams rely on, and trust to deliver products that our 

Successful applicants typically have 8+ years of software development experience

Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver new platform capabilities

Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks

, applying and sharing best practices to evaluate and scale AI use safely across teams

Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and make measurable user impact at scale

Experience with large scale refactors, performance and reliability issues, and a strong sense of ownership over all aspects of your platform area

Ability to mentor engineers to maximize their performance and impact

Experience in, or interest working in, Ruby on Rails 

Appreciation for a collaborative, test-driven environment

Ability to build well-structured, maintainable, well-documented code

Ability to effectively communicate across engineering teams and with business stakeholders

Do you prefer heavy feature development instead? Check out our Staff Software Engineer, Core Products job listing.

In-person onboarding

Gusto is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for its Core Platforms team to design and scale foundational systems. The role involves building self-service internal features and APIs using Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, and React. Key responsibilities include mentoring engineers and leveraging AI tools to improve platform capabilities.

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