Staff / Principal

Gusto is on a mission to grow the small business economy, handling payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR for over 500,000 small businesses nationwide. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, all full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs). AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto; all team members are expected to engage with AI tools relevant to their role.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Core Products team, you will operate across the full product lifecycle, shaping features from spec and design through launch and iteration. You will write clean frontend code, design and build reliable backend APIs, influence product direction, and take ownership of post-launch performance.

• Design, build, and test Gusto core products such as Payroll, Benefits, HR, Retirement, Gusto Money, Gusto Solo, and Gusto Pro.
• Mentor engineers to solve complex technical problems at scale.
• Help scale one of the largest Ruby/Rails and Javascript/React applications in the world.
• Collaborate with Product Management, Data, Design, and Platform Engineering teams to prototype, iterate, and launch daily.

• 10+ years of software development experience.
• Experience building scalable solutions that eliminate customer pain.
• Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development and deliver new capabilities.
• Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks, applying best practices to evaluate and scale AI use safely.
• Experience owning multi-quarter projects with measurable customer impact at scale.
• Experience with large-scale refactors, performance, and reliability issues.
• Ability to mentor engineers to maximize performance and impact.

Cash compensation 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 offers vary by experience and expertise.

This role is hybrid in New York, NY or San Francisco, CA. Employees based in those locations are expected to work from the office approximately 2-3 days per week. A two-day travel to a Gusto office for onboarding is required.

Apply through the Gusto Greenhouse job board using the provided link.