Principal Product Manager, Payroll Platform

Gusto; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 179,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Gusto is seeking a Principal Product Manager for Payroll Platform to define the API-driven foundation that powers payroll across the company and partners. You’ll join a lean, AI-forward team that prototyped and shipped with AI, turning complex payroll tasks into simple, reliable experiences.

You will own the vision, strategy and cross-functional collaboration to migrate users, design safe AI-enabled workflows, and measure adoption with impact on accuracy and efficiency for small businesses.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of direct Product Management experience.
• Experience owning a platform/API or developer product and driving adoption.
• Technical fluency in APIs, data models and system design; led a migration to a new API/interface.
• Strong platform judgment for shared system contracts and decisions.
• Experience designing for trust with auditability and safety in automated systems.

Responsibilities

• Define the vision, strategy and roadmap for Payroll Platform.
• Drive adoption by teams, partners and agents building on payroll, with metrics tied to customer outcomes.
• Collaborate across engineering, design, data and compliance to deliver one product.
• Build a unified payroll API and lead migrations of existing users and systems onto it.
• Define payroll actions, controls, audit trails and evaluations to enable safe AI agents.

Skills

Platform ownership

APIs

LLMs

Cross-team leadership

Stakeholder management

Job description

About the company

At the company, 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 the company 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 the company. 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.

By the Numbers:

• Named #1 best software for small business of 2024 by G2

• 2,700+ employees in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Turkiye and growing

• Over $500M in annual revenue

• The SMB market is large (and growing!) with huge opportunities for the company to make an incredible impact for SMBs

• There are 6.2M employers in the US, 98% have fewer than 100 employees (1)

• 550,000 new businesses are created each year in the US (1)

What Product Management is like at the company:

• Our Product team is lean, which means you’ll have a high degree of impact and ownership. We believe in smaller, empowered teams that move quickly with less overhead. You’ll move fast by pairing sharp product judgment with fluency in AI tools, automating what slows teams down and amplifying what makes them creative and high-performing.

• We’re boundaryless builders. Lines between roles are intentionally blurred, and our PMs do whatever it takes to deliver outcomes. You’ll prototype, automate, design, and ship, using AI as your co-builder to turn problems into durable solutions that deliver customer value with urgency and care.

• We’re here to serve small and medium businesses. the company has a strong mission-driven culture, and we care deeply about lifting up these business owners, building technology for an AI-first world that gives them the superpowers to run and grow their businesses with confidence.

• We’re comfortable with change. Our environment moves fast, and PMs here thrive in ambiguity, blending curiosity, experimentation, and AI-native craft to shape how products (and work itself) are built at the company.

About the Team:

Every payday is a promise between a business and the people who make it possible. At the company, we want to make keeping that promise effortless so small business owners can focus on growing their business, and their teams can count on being paid. As work evolves, we have an opportunity to make payroll simpler, more connected, and more useful than ever.

As Principal Product Manager for Payroll Platform, you’ll build the foundation for that future. You’ll shape the APIs that help teams and partners create new ways to pay people, connect payroll to the tools where work happens, and enable AI agents to turn complex tasks into simpler experiences. Your work will help businesses spend less time preparing payroll and give product builders more room to innovate, with trust built into every step. You’ll join a lean team where PMs prototype, experiment, and ship with AI and where your ideas can become the capabilities others build on.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Ownership: Define the vision, strategy and roadmap for Payroll Platform. Decide what belongs in the shared platform and what teams build on top, including API contracts, common pay-input interfaces and the boundaries between payroll and neighboring systems.

• North Star: Drive adoption by the teams, partners and agents building on payroll. Define and use metrics for adoption, reliability and error rates, and connect them to customer outcomes such as fewer payroll errors and less time preparing payroll.

• Collaborate: Lead work across engineering, design, data and compliance. Partner with the teams consuming the platform, make speed-versus-safety trade-offs explicit, and help what they built feel like one product.

• Build a unified payroll API and lead migrations of existing users and systems onto it, making it easier for teams and partners to support different worker types and new ways to pay people.

• Define the payroll actions, controls, audit trails and evaluations that let AI agents work safely. Prototype and test with AI, and expand agent autonomy as evidence supports it.

Here’s what we’re looking for

• 8+ years of direct Product Management experience.

• Experience owning a platform, API or developer product that other teams or partners built on, and driving its adoption.

• Technical fluency in APIs, data models and system design, with experience leading a migration to a new API or interface and credibility with senior engineers.

• Strong platform judgment: you can decide what the shared system should and shouldn’t do, and make thoughtful choices about contracts and other decisions that are difficult to reverse.

• Experience designing for trust in systems where errors have real consequences, including clear controls, auditability and evidence-based expansion of automation.

• Hands‑on experience building with LLMs or agents, including tool design and evaluations. You use AI to prototype and ship, and can explain the choices and trade‑offs behind your work.

• Experience leading multi-team work across engineering, design and data, and connecting platform metrics to customer outcomes. Payroll, payments, tax or fintech experience is a plus, not required; we’ll teach the domain.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is $179,000,000/yr to $220,000/yr in Denver & most major metro locations, and $210,000/yr to $260,000/yr for San Francisco, Seattle & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate location, experience, and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

the company 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, the company'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 the company 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 stro