Staff / Principal

Gusto's mission is to grow the small business economy by handling payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR for small businesses. They support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide with teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York.

Gusto is standing up a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), with Benefits as the anchor. The core is a national Master Health Plan that can unlock ~20–25% lower healthcare costs for small businesses. As a Staff Software Engineer on the PEO Benefits team, you will operate across the full product lifecycle, from spec and design to launch and iteration, making foundational architectural decisions.

• Design, build, and test the Gusto PEO Benefits experience, including benefits shopping and plan-recommendation flows, carrier integrations, MCP tools, and agents that automate operational and customer support processes.
• Mentor other 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 understand customer pain points and launch solutions.

• 8+ years of software development experience.
• PEO expertise preferred: 3+ years building PEO flows in a high-growth environment.
• Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and make measurable customer impact at scale.
• Experience driving large, cross-functional projects end-to-end through ambiguity.
• Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development and deliver new product capabilities.
• Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks.
• Ability to mentor engineers.
• Experience or interest in Ruby on Rails.
• Appreciation for a collaborative, test-driven environment.
• Ability to build well-structured, maintainable, well-documented code.
• Ability to communicate across engineering teams and with business stakeholders.

Cash compensation: $163,000–$204,000 in Denver & most remote locations; $197,000–$247,000 for San Francisco & New York. Stock equity is additional. All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs).

Hybrid: Denver, CO; New York, NY; San Francisco, CA. Employees based in those locations work from the office approximately 2-3 days per week. Travel to a Gusto office for onboarding is required.

Apply through the Gusto Greenhouse job posting.