Manager - Developer Productivity, AI Tools

Gusto; Denver (CO); Hybrid; USD 240,000 - 305,000; Full time

Job summary

Gusto is seeking an experienced Engineering Leader for AI Dev Tools who will own the agentic coding platform end-to-end, from product bets to underlying CI and sandboxing.

You’ll negotiate vendor contracts, set security posture, mentor senior engineers, and partner with CTO on the future of AI-native software at Gusto. Hybrid work across Denver, SF, NY with a chance to lead in a fast-moving space.

Qualifications

• 8+ years leading engineers through ambiguous, fast-moving problems.
• Direct hands-on experience with agentic coding tools.
• Experience owning significant vendor or infrastructure contracts.
• Ability to make autonomy and risk tradeoffs without a dedicated security team.

Responsibilities

• Own the agentic coding roadmap. Set direction for interactive and autonomous agent modes, entry points, and the orchestration model for multi-step/multi-repo agent work.
• Agentic code review. Own its accuracy/coverage roadmap, and tradeoffs between review quality, merge speed, and cost.
• Set the security and risk posture for autonomous coding agents at Gusto. Define sandboxing/permission-scoping and hardening.
• Set and enforce AI infrastructure spend guardrails for your team, translating usage data into cost decisions.
• Lead and grow a team of senior engineers, recruit, mentor, and calibrate levels.
• Be a direct strategic partner to engineering leadership on AI-native software direction at Gusto.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Autonomy in decision‑making

Strategic collaboration with execs

Clear communication

Tools

Claude Code

Cursor

Codex

Job description

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.

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

AI Dev Tools builds the platform Gusto engineers use to work with AI, not just alongside it: agentic coding environments (local and cloud), automated AI code review, and the CI/security infrastructure underneath both. In this role, you'll own that platform end-to-end from the product bet (what should an agent be trusted to do autonomously, and when) to the infrastructure underneath it (CI systems, sandboxing, vendor contracts) to the team building it.

This is not a traditional \"developer productivity\" management role. You'll be making judgment calls on agent autonomy and security posture, negotiating infrastructure vendor contracts, and setting the AI-spend guardrails your own team operates under in addition to the standard Engineering Manager work of growing and unblocking a team of senior engineers.

About The Team

AI Dev Tools builds Gusto's agentic coding platform: tooling infrastructure, agent runtimes, AI code reviews, The team also owns the security work required to run AI workloads safely in the cloud, like queue isolation, permission scoping.

The team partners constantly with Infra, Security, and Legal (on vendor contracts and AI risk posture), and reports on strategy directly to Gusto's CTO.

Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day

• Own the agentic coding roadmap. Set direction for interactive and autonomous agent modes, entry points (Slack, web, CLI), and the orchestration model for multi-step/multi-repo agent work.


• Agentic code review. Own its accuracy/coverage roadmap, and make the real tradeoff calls between review quality, PR merge speed, and per-review inference cost — backed by data, not vibes.


• Set the security and risk posture for autonomous coding agents at Gusto. Decide what an agent can do unsupervised, own the sandboxing/permission-scoping model, and drive the underlying hardening (runtime isolation, secrets handling, blast-radius containment) needed to run agent workloads safely.


• Set and enforce AI infrastructure spend guardrails for your team, translating raw usage data into judgment calls about what's legitimate cost of doing the job vs. what needs a conversation.


• Lead and grow a team of senior engineers working across ambiguous, fast-moving problem spaces — recruit, mentor, run the hiring loop, and make calibration/leveling calls you can defend.


• Be a direct strategic partner to engineering leadership (including the CTO) on where AI-native software development is heading at Gusto, grounded in what's actually shippable, not vendor hype.

Here’s What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of engineering people leadership experience, including managing senior engineers through ambiguous, rapidly-changing technical problems (not just well-scoped roadmap execution)


• Direct, hands-on experience with agentic coding tools — you are a daily power user of Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or equivalent, not someone who has read about them


• Experience owning a significant vendor or infrastructure contract from technical requirements through legal and procurement close


• Comfort making autonomy/risk tradeoff calls on AI systems without a dedicated security team making the call for you — you understand the shape of the risk (e.g., prompt injection, credential exposure, permission bypass) well enough to scope it yourself


• Track record of leading through ambiguity across more than one nominally separate problem domain at once


• Strong, direct communication — evidenced by briefing senior/executive stakeholders on strategy (not just status) and getting real decisions out of those conversations


• Self-driven mindset, comfortable in Gusto's PE model: your job is removing roadblocks and setting direction, not command-and-control management

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $240,000-260,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $290,000-305,000 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.