Head of AI Developer Tools & Platform

Gusto; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 240,000 - 305,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (RSUs)

Benefits

Competitive base pay

Job summary

Gusto seeks a growth-minded leader for its AI Dev Tools platform, owning the agentic coding environment from strategy to infrastructure. You will define when agents operate autonomously, manage security posture, and negotiate vendor contracts while growing a team of senior engineers.

You will partner with CTO and engineering leadership to shape AI-native software development. The role emphasizes setting guardrails for AI spend, balancing innovation with risk, and aligning with Gusto's total

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering people leadership experience.
• Direct, hands-on experience with agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) or equivalent.
• Experience owning a significant vendor or infrastructure contract from technical requirements through procurement.
• Comfort making autonomy/risk tradeoff calls on AI systems without a dedicated security team.
• Track record of leading through ambiguity across more than one problem domain at once.
• Strong, direct communication with senior/executive stakeholders on strategy and decisions.
• Self-driven mindset, removing roadblocks and setting direction.

Responsibilities

• Own the agentic coding roadmap. Set direction for interactive and autonomous agent modes and entry points.
• Agentic code review. Define its accuracy/coverage roadmap and tradeoffs between quality, speed, and cost.
• Set the security and risk posture for autonomous coding agents, sandboxing, and permission scoping.
• Set and enforce AI infrastructure spend guardrails for the team.
• Lead and grow a team of senior engineers, recruit, mentor, and calibrate levels.
• Be a strategic partner to engineering leadership on AI-native software development direction.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Autonomy decision-making

Executive stakeholder communication

Ambiguity management

Vendor contracts management

Tools

Claude Code

Cursor

Codex

Job description

Gusto seeks a growth-minded leader for its AI Dev Tools platform, owning the agentic coding environment from strategy to infrastructure. You will define when agents operate autonomously, manage security posture, and negotiate vendor contracts while growing a team of senior engineers.

You will partner with CTO and engineering leadership to shape AI-native software development. The role emphasizes setting guardrails for AI spend, balancing innovation with risk, and aligning with Gusto's total