Senior Engineering Manager, Symmetry Product Development

The Wrap; Scottsdale (AZ); Hybrid; USD 189,000 - 237,000; Full time

Job summary

Gusto is seeking an engineering leader to drive AI-native innovation across our payroll and platform portfolio in Scottsdale. You will own vision for both platform and product, partner with product managers, and lead a major transformation of DevOps and Quality Assurance to empower engineers and improve velocity.

You will evaluate new AI technologies, champion scalable architecture, and guide teams toward AI-driven, higher-quality software delivery while aligning with business goals and customer

Qualifications

• Masters or Bachelor degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of engineering leadership experience – managing both people and tech stacks.
• Proven ability to lead DevOps and Quality Assurance transformations.
• Experience with AI native product development leveraging AWS services (Bedrock, Agent Core, etc).
• Strong communication with cross functional peers and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Aligning teams to focus on new AI native features and business goals.
• Taking complete functional ownership of your area including vision for platform and product.
• Initiating innovation and providing initial inspiration to start teams.
• Elevating engineering practices to be AI-native and guiding adoption of AI tools and processes.
• Aligning and prioritizing organization deliverables with leadership across departments.
• Ensuring products are performant, available, resilient, and stable.
• Leading transformation of DevOps and QA to be strategic partners for sustainable operations.
• Evaluating emerging technologies and championing applicable AI solutions.
• Collaborating with engineering leaders to design clear sub-systems and improve platform architecture.

Skills

Engineering leadership

DevOps leadership

AI-native development

Cross-functional communication

Agile methodologies

Distributed systems

CI/CD & test automation

Education

Masters or Bachelor in CS/IS

Tools

AWS Bedrock

Agent Core

SaaS systems

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.

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.

Symmetry Software is part of Gusto. Symmetry is the payroll infrastructure for software & payroll platforms powering the paychecks of over 64 million workers each year. Our fully integrated suite of payroll tax APIs and software tools allows companies to solve tax compliance issues and build applications across the entirety of the payroll process.

About the Role:

We are seeking a seasoned engineering leader for our product development team, passionate about leveraging AI to shape the future of our industry. This role is dual-focused: providing robust support for our existing core payroll products while proactively advancing the incorporation of AI throughout our entire product portfolio and Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). You will be a crucial driver in instilling an AI-native approach at every stage of development. You will lead a significant change in our shared services groups, like DevOps and Quality Assurance. The goal is to support our engineers more actively. You will also act as strategic partners, not just as a team that processes outputs. The ideal candidate will be an "activator," bringing execution rigor and vision to champion truly innovative, smart features and core capabilities through machine learning and generative AI. Your leadership will be integral to our company's growth, ensuring AI is a fundamental component of our product differentiation.

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

• Aligning teams to focus on new AI native features, and business goals.
• Taking complete functional ownership of your area including vision for both the platform and product in partnership with product managers and stakeholders.
• Initiating innovation, ideas, or actions by providing the initial inspiration needed to get a team started.
• Elevating our engineering practices to be AI-native, guiding adoption of tools, processes, and methodologies that leverage AI to increase velocity, code quality, and operational efficiency across the team.
• Aligning and prioritizing the organization deliverables based on the company needs, working closely with the leadership across functional departments.
• Ensuring products and services are performant, available 24x7x365, resilient, and stable.
• You will lead the transformation of our shared services groups, such as DevOps and Quality Assurance. Your role is to promote a change agent mindset. You will also adjust their function to support our engineers actively. This will help them become strategic partners for sustainable operations and ongoing improvement.
• Evaluating emerging technologies including SaaS systems for opportunities to improve services, acting as technical consultant for the company to champion applicable technical solutions.
• You will work with engineering leaders across the company. Your role involves designing clear sub-systems. You will also help improve the platform architecture used by the entire company.

Here's what we're looking for:

• Masters or Bachelor degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of engineering leadership experience – managing both people and tech stacks.
• You must have a proven ability to lead changes in organizations. Focus on DevOps and Quality Assurance. Transform these functions from cost centers into essential parts of strategic engineering.
• Prior experience or exposure in AI native product development leveraging AWS services (Bedrock, Agent Core, etc)
• A proven track record and ability to communicate with cross functional peers, communicating technical concepts to business stakeholders, and communicating business objectives to the technical team.
• Demonstrated ability to take ownership on problems and projects and lead them to completion.
• A proven ability to debug and triage critical systems, including team performance.
• Hands-on experience with agile methodologies, and their functional application.
• Strong Experience with web application development, Dev-ops, distributed systems, CI/CD and quality test automation.
• Solid knowledge of Object-Oriented Design, Service Oriented Architecture, and Systems thinking.
• Good verbal and written presentation skills, including ability to prepare materials for audiences at all levels of the organization.

Compensation Details

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $189,000/yr to $237,000/yr in Scottsdale & most major metro locations. 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.

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