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Staff Software Engineer, Core Products

Gusto, Inc. · San Francisco, CA - Hybrid; Denver, CO - Hybrid; New York, NY - Hybrid;

Engineering United States - Denver, CO United States - New York, NY United States - San Francisco, CA Posted May 8, 2026

About Gusto

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 Total Rewards philosophy.

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.

About the Role:

We're looking for seasoned full-stack software engineers to join the teams behind Gusto's customer-facing products — the features and experiences that small business owners and their employees rely on every day.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll operate across the full product lifecycle: shaping features from early spec and design through to launch and long-term iteration. That means writing clean frontend code, designing and building reliable backend APIs, influencing product direction, and taking ownership of what happens after a feature ships.

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!

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

Design, build, and test Gusto core products such as Payroll, Benefits, HR, Retirement, Gusto Money, Gusto Solo, and Gusto Pro, 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 Management, Data, Design, and Platform Engineering teams to understand customer pain points, come up with solutions, and then prototype, iterate, and launch daily
Build products that our customers genuinely love

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Successful applicants typically have 8+ years of software development experience
Experience building scalable solutions that eliminate customer pain; passion for creating memorable experiences for customers
Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver new product 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 customer impact at scale
Experience with large scale refactors, performance and reliability issues, and a strong sense of ownership over all aspects of your product area
Ability to mentor engineers to maximize their performance and impact

Others:

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 platform development instead? Check out our Staff Software Engineer, Core Platforms job listing.

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.

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 2-3 days 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 this form 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 Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.

Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.

Ready to apply?

Apply to Gusto, Inc.

Gusto, Inc.

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Principal Software Engineer - Pay Group Engineering

Gusto, Inc. · Denver, CO;San Francisco, CA;New York, NY

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Engineering United States - Denver, CO United States - New York, NY United States - San Francisco, CA Posted May 6, 2026

About Gusto

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 Total Rewards philosophy.

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.

Location: Only SF, Denver, NYC

About the Role:

We’re hiring seasoned engineers to join our teams that work on core platform capabilities, improving our existing systems for extensibility and scalability, and building the future of Gusto's Payroll and Tax systems. As a Gusto Software Engineer at this level, you’ll be guiding projects end-to-end by influencing initial feature specs, understanding how to take existing systems closer to desired end states, executing on projects, and maintaining code that powers core experiences. If you’re interested in building elegant software with far-reaching effects in our modern economy, join us!

About the Team:

Payroll is the beating heart of Gusto’s business. Pay Group (payroll and tax) teams are responsible for the product, ops, and service components Gusto uses to onboard customers, process payrolls, calculate taxes and deductions, pay and file with tax agencies, and maintain compliance on behalf of the customers. The domain is highly complex and offers the opportunity to engage in system design that simplifies this for customers, both internal and external.

Sub- Teams:

Tax Accuracy: The Tax Accuracy group is responsible for gathering and maintaining the necessary information for us to pay and file taxes accurately and on time for our customers, and consists of multiple teams that cover various parts of the process.
Ledger: This team is building a payroll ledger to track accrual accounting for payroll-related money movement. This team is starting to support the payroll domain, risk, payments, and accounting.
Engine: This team works closely with the payroll compliance team to ensure enablement of compliant pay, such as minimum wage adjustments, regular rate of pay, etc. We enable end-to-end success of payroll processing and working with various domain teams such as tax calculations, tax setup, payments, and more.
Platform: This team is developing a new platform to be the common interface for interacting with payroll and tax data. The payroll and tax domain is highly complex; our team exists to make it easier for other application teams to interact with the payroll and tax system. We enable application and experience teams to deliver customer value faster by providing a scalable, flexible, performant, and highly understandable platform to integrate with.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

Function as a Technical Lead across multiple teams in Payroll Services, helping us keep engineers unblocked and deliver high-quality work supporting our long-term goals
Design, build, and test the foundation that supports compliant payroll for millions of people
Help scale one of the largest Ruby/Rails and TypeScript/React applications in the world
Collaborate on complex and ambiguous problems with partnerships from Engineering, Product Management, Design, Data Science, Compliance, Operations, and other cross-functional teams
Mentor and grow fellow engineers working to create holistic and scalable solutions
Drive the product development process from concept to launch, delivering delightful products that make payroll, taxes, and compliance simple and easy
Improve the productivity and happiness of our teams with the services, tools, and APIs you build.
Engage in a highly supportive environment working with others to drive productivity and innovation
Continuously stay up-to-date with advancements in AI and Machine Learning, applying this knowledge to our projects.

Here’s what we're looking for:

Successful applicants typically have at least 15+ years of experience
Able to build maintainable, structured, well-documented code
Strong knowledge of data structures, data modeling, and system design
Experience working across 3+ teams, influencing both product and team direction
Experience working on platform products which are depended upon throughout the company
Experience engineering, designing, building and supporting large scale systems in production
An aptitude in bringing clarity and simplicity to complex problems, communicating technical complexity and facilitating informed tradeoffs to major stakeholders
Experience operationalizing and scaling large interconnected production systems
Enthusiasm for a collaborative, test-driven environment
Experience in complex highly regulated domains

Examples: HR, Payroll, Taxes, or Compliance

Experience using AI tools to build, test, and iterate on products quickly.
Understanding of how to evaluate AI-driven outputs using clear success criteria.
A commitment to staying current on emerging backend technologies and AI frameworks and patterns, regularly experimenting with new approaches.
Willingness to contribute to shared tools or templates that enhance the speed and safety of AI experimentation.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $215,000/yr to $252,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $251,000/yr to $295,000/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.

#LI-DNI

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 2-3 days 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 this form 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 Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.

Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.

Ready to apply?

Apply to Gusto, Inc.

Gusto, Inc.

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Staff Software Engineer, Observability

Gusto, Inc. · San Francisco, CA

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Engineering United States - San Francisco, CA Posted May 6, 2026

About Gusto

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 Total Rewards philosophy.

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.

Staff Observability Engineer

Gusto’s Reliability Engineering team enables our product teams to build impactful products by building secure, resilient, and accessible systems, using tools like AWS, Terraform, Datadog, and Kubernetes.

About Gusto

Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of full-service payroll, Gusto offers health insurance, 401(k)s, expert HR, and team management tools. Today, Gusto offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York serve more than 200,000 businesses nationwide.

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That’s why we’re committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

What You’ll Do

Shape the engineering organization standards around observability.
Own and evolve the observability platform, including distributed logging, metrics, and tracing infrastructure.
Build AI-native capabilities to automatically detect anomalies, diagnose failures, and accelerate root cause analysis.
Create powerful developer experiences through dashboards, notebooks, and interactive debugging tools.
Drive reliability automation with intelligent alerting, diagnostics, and incident response systems.
Partner across engineering teams to embed observability and reliability best practices.
Mentor engineers and influence reliability culture across the organization.

What We’re Looking For

Strategic systems thinker who identifies high impact opportunities and builds scalable solutions.
Experience operating large scale distributed systems in production, especially logging platforms or time series databases.
Strong fundamentals in systems, networking, and cloud infrastructure such as Kubernetes and AWS.
Thrive in ambiguous environments and roll up your sleeves to solve unscoped problems end to end.
Product mindset or full stack instincts and excited to build real tools engineers love to use.
Strong communicator who can align technical and non technical stakeholders.
Bonus if you have built or contributed to observability ecosystems such as OpenTelemetry or Prometheus

Required Experience

Have 8+ years of relevant industry experience building and operating large-scale observability or monitoring infrastructure
Experience implementing or operating observability platforms such as Datadog, Sentry, Splunk, or similar.
Have strong SWE coding proficiency in at least one of Ruby, Python, or TypeScript.

Preferred Experience

Cloud infrastructure experience (AWS preferred).
Infrastructure-as-Code, such as Terraform or Crossplane.
Container orchestration, such as Kubernetes.
Linux systems knowledge and shell proficiency.
Experience designing highly available and scalable systems.
Experience acting as an internal consultant or trusted advisor.

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.

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 2-3 days 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 this form 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 Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.

Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.

Ready to apply?

Apply to Gusto, Inc.

Gusto, Inc.

View all jobs →

Staff Business Systems Analyst

Gusto, Inc. · Denver, CO;San Francisco, CA

Apply now

Engineering United States - Denver, CO United States - San Francisco, CA Posted May 6, 2026

About Gusto

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 Total Rewards philosophy.

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.

About the Team:

The Unified Service Platform (USP) product team serves as Gusto’s architectural backbone, responsible for engineering the intelligent, AI-driven ecosystem that brings GTM and Service operations into alignment. Our mission is to replace fragmented point solutions with a singular System of Intelligence—a digital exoskeleton that strips away administrative friction so our teams can focus on what matters most: our customers. Through our commitment to a #OneGusto experience, we provide the platform that ensures every internal interaction is backed by the full context of the customer journey.

We are an AI-native team building "agentic" solutions that transform how work happens. By mastering the AI-Human-AI loop, we own the delivery of a seamless, cross-channel journey across voice, chat, and email. Our goal is to ensure that our internal technical excellence creates an instant, easy and effortless experience for every business Gusto serves.

Here's what you'll do day-to-day:

Drive Platform Excellence: Lead system improvements through effective requirements elicitation, configuration, administration, development, and application support for our Salesforce platform — ensuring it scales with Gusto's growth.
Lead Cross-Functional Delivery: Manage projects and partner closely with cross-functional teams to roll out new systems, reduce process inefficiencies, and deliver measurable impact across the organization.
Own the Integration Ecosystem: Manage integrated applications and third-party suppliers — including NICE CXOne, Qualtrics, Gong, Chili Piper, Outreach, RingLead, Catalyst, and more — ensuring seamless connectivity across the GTM tech stack.
Be a Technology Strategist: Partner with stakeholders to take ownership of the roadmap and tools they depend on, driving efficiency and enabling Gusto to scale with confidence.
Build Exceptional Gustie Experiences: Design and maintain best-in-class experiences using Salesforce Service and Sales Clouds, with a focus on usability and adoption.
Own Lead-to-Cash: Be accountable for the vision, strategy, and roadmap of our lead-to-cash capabilities — ensuring end-to-end process integrity across the revenue lifecycle.
Champion Change Communication: Own the communication of platform changes to end users and stakeholders, driving clarity and adoption at every stage.

Here's what we're looking for:

Revenue Systems Veteran: 7+ years of experience as a Business Systems Analyst supporting Revenue organizations, with a proven track record of designing and supporting large-scale, technically complex Salesforce solutions.
Salesforce Strategist: 4+ years of strategic Salesforce ownership, including defining the platform's vision, roadmap, and prioritization — with deep knowledge of best practices for Salesforce architecture and governance.
GTM Tool Expert: Comprehensive knowledge of GTM tools (e.g., Salesforce, NICE CXOne, Chili Piper, RingLead, ZoomInfo, CPQ, or related technologies) and the ability to manage integrated third-party applications end-to-end.
AI Builder & Fast Learner: Demonstrated comfort using AI tools (e.g., Claude, Copilot, or similar) to accelerate development, generate code, and write requirements — and a genuine eagerness to upskill in an AI-native, fast-paced environment.
Analytical Problem-Solver: Demonstrated ability to analyze processes and data to deliver impactful, scalable solutions that reduce inefficiencies and support Gusto's growth.
Communicator & Collaborator: Strong interpersonal skills with experience working across diverse teams and functions, including training and enabling end users to drive platform adoption.
Certified (Preferred, Not Required): Salesforce certifications (e.g., Administrator, Platform App Builder, Advanced Administrator, Business Analyst, Sales Cloud Consultant) are a plus.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $129,000-160,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $154,000-193,000 for San Francisco & New York. 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 2-3 days 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 this form 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 Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.

Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.

Ready to apply?

Apply to Gusto, Inc.

Gusto, Inc.

View all jobs →

Enterprise Application AI Architect

Gusto, Inc. · Denver, CO;San Francisco, CA;New York, NY;Los Angeles, CA;Seattle, WA;Ontario, CAN - Remote;Toronto, Ontario, CAN - Remote;United States - Remote

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Engineering United States - Denver, CO United States - New York, NY United States - San Francisco, CA Canada - Ontario - Remote Canada - Toronto, Ontario - Remote United States - Los Angeles, CA - Remote United States - Remote United States - Seattle, WA - Remote Posted May 6, 2026

About Gusto

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 Total Rewards philosophy.

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.

About the Role:

As the Enterprise Applications AI Architect, you will lead the integration of AI and automation across Gusto’s enterprise applications ecosystem, transforming how internal systems connect, communicate, and operate. Sitting within the IT and Enterprise Applications organization, you will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Finance, People Tech, and Operations to bridge business needs with AI driven solutions. You will act as the connector between business requirements and AI frameworks, designing Model Context Protocols (MCPs) and AI agents that make enterprise workflows smarter, faster, and more autonomous. In line with Gusto’s FY26 Enterprise Systems strategy, you will help shift our ERP and Finance systems from reactive workflows to predictive, context aware, and self improving platforms, while ensuring security, compliance, and measurable impact. This role combines hands-on technical execution with strategic systems thinking, using integration fluency, AI literacy, and business empathy to create the connective tissue that allows AI to seamlessly augment enterprise operations.

About the Team:

This role will report to the Enterprise AIT team, a group focused on driving the intelligent transformation of Gusto’s enterprise systems. The Enterprise AIT team is responsible for integrating AI, automation, and advanced analytics across our internal applications ecosystem to improve scalability, efficiency, and decision-making. Partnering closely with Finance, Business Ops, IT, and Security, the team enables Gusto’s enterprise systems to become smarter, more predictive, and more adaptive. This is a new role, designed to expand the team’s capacity to operationalize AI within enterprise workflows and support Gusto’s broader Enterprise Systems strategy.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

Translate business needs into AI workflows by partnering with Finance and Business Operations teams to identify automation opportunities and design agentic workflows that improve decision making and reduce manual effort.
Develop and maintain Model Context Protocols (MCPs) that securely and reliably connect enterprise systems such as NetSuite, Zuora, and Jira to AI agents, with clear documentation and optimization.
Create and manage intelligent agents that execute or augment core enterprise processes such as onboarding, billing support, and compliance monitoring using large language models and orchestration frameworks.
Govern the full lifecycle of MCPs and agents, ensuring adherence to enterprise data governance, privacy, and security standards, including SOX compliance, auditability, and appropriate access controls.
Measure and optimize impact by defining and tracking KPIs such as automation adoption, efficiency gains, agent accuracy, reliability, and cost performance, and using those insights to guide iteration.
Enable and influence the organization by partnering with IT, Security, and business stakeholders to build reusable AI frameworks, coach teams on safe and effective AI driven workflows, and champion AI first practices across day to day operations.

Here’s what we're looking for:

8+ years in Business Systems Analysis, Enterprise Applications, or Automation roles, with a track record of delivering impact in complex environments.
Demonstrated experience building and maintaining integrations across systems such as Jira, NetSuite, or similar, with a strong grasp of APIs, JSON, and RESTful service design.
Hands-on knowledge of AI agent frameworks (for example LangChain, CrewAI, Semantic Kernel, MCP) and experience designing or maintaining Model Context Protocols or equivalent frameworks.
Familiarity with leading LLM platforms (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini etc.) and practical experience with prompt engineering.
Proficiency in Python or JavaScript for automation, orchestration, and building modular, scalable AI workflows that translate complex requirements into executable solutions.
Strong documentation, analytical, and stakeholder communication skills, with the ability to clearly explain tradeoffs and align technical solutions with business needs.
Passion for building secure, compliant, and explainable AI systems, embedding risk, privacy, and compliance considerations (including SOX and audit controls) into every solution, with a growth mindset and focus on clarity, iteration, and measurable outcomes.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $150,000-$165,000 /yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $185,000-$205,000 /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.

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 2-3 days 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 this form 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 Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.

Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.

Ready to apply?

Apply to Gusto, Inc.

Gusto, Inc.

View all jobs →

Staff Software Engineer, Database Infrastructure

Gusto, Inc. · Denver, CO;San Francisco, CA;New York, NY;Los Angeles, CA;Seattle, WA

Apply now

Engineering United States - Denver, CO United States - New York, NY United States - San Francisco, CA United States - Los Angeles, CA - Remote United States - Seattle, WA - Remote Posted May 6, 2026

About Gusto

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 Total Rewards philosophy.

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.

About the Role:

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.

About the Team:

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.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

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

Here’s what we're looking for:

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