Head of AI Platform Engineering & Scale

Gusto, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 274,000 - 356,000; Full time

Job summary

Gusto is building AI agents to help small business owners get work done, with the AI Platform group responsible for the agents and underlying platform. You will lead a ~25-engineer organization, grow the group, and align with Gusto's broader AI strategy.

You’ll work with product managers, data scientists, and other engineers to scale the platform, establish ownership boundaries, and drive reliable, cost-aware systems at scale.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in engineering leadership, including guiding multiple managers.
• Proven track record shipping AI or agent products used by customers.
• Ability to set and drive technical strategy across several teams.
• Deep technical depth to discuss architecture with senior engineers.
• Experience growing an engineering organization and defining team structure.
• Commitment to reliability, evaluation, and guardrails as core engineering work.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration with product managers, designers, and data scientists.
• Excellent communication across technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead the group’s technical strategy for building agents and ensure the platform is reusable by other teams.
• Set the group’s technical direction and roadmap, balancing platform ownership with product needs.
• Lead and empower managers and tech leads, hire ahead of growth, and build leadership.
• Define engineering standards for prompts, tools, and policies; own evaluation and guardrails.
• Collaborate with product and data science teams and other groups building on the platform.
• Represent AI engineering to senior leadership and align with Gusto’s AI strategy.
• Foster AI-native ways of working and attract and retain top engineering talent.

Skills

Engineering leadership

AI platforms

LLM agents

Cross-functional leadership

Technical strategy

LangGraph

Vercel AI SDK

Tools

LangGraph

Vercel AI SDK

Job description

Gusto is building AI agents to help small business owners get work done, with the AI Platform group responsible for the agents and underlying platform. You will lead a ~25-engineer organization, grow the group, and align with Gusto's broader AI strategy.

You’ll work with product managers, data scientists, and other engineers to scale the platform, establish ownership boundaries, and drive reliable, cost-aware systems at scale.