Senior Staff Engineer - Tax Platform Engineering

Gusto; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Gusto is seeking seasoned software engineers to join teams working on core platform capabilities and the Tax platform. You will influence feature specs, improve existing systems, and maintain code powering critical experiences.

You will build scalable solutions with Ruby on Rails and TypeScript/React, collaborating with Engineering, Product, Design, Data Science, Compliance, and Operations to deliver reliable tax-related features for millions of users.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and building scalable tax-related platform components.
• Ability to work with cross-functional teams including Engineering, Product, Design, Data Science, Compliance, and Operations.
• Strong problem-solving and communication skills in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and test the platform that supports tax compliance for millions of users.
• Scale a large Ruby on Rails and TypeScript/React application.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to solve complex problems.
• Improve developer productivity with robust services, tools, and APIs.
• Build guardrails for AI-enabled tax concepts to ensure compliance and reliability.

Skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Problem solving

Communication

Tools

Ruby on Rails

TypeScript/React

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.

About the Role

We’re hiring seasoned engineers to join our teams that work on core platform capabilities, improving our existing systems for extensibility and scalability, and building the future of Gusto's Tax platform. As a Gusto Software Engineer at this level, you’ll be guiding projects end-to-end by influencing initial feature specs, understanding how to take existing systems closer to desired end states, executing on projects, and maintaining code that powers core experiences. If you’re interested in building elegant software with far-reaching effects in our modern economy, join us!

About the Team

Payroll is the beating heart of Gusto’s business. The Tax team ensures Gusto customers remain compliant and confident by managing every aspect of payroll taxes—including setup, calculation, payments, filings, and year-end communications. We design seamless, end-to-end experiences that simplify complex processes and build the infrastructure that keeps taxes accurate and on time. By combining reliable systems with thoughtful design, our team makes one of the most complicated parts of running a business simple for employers. Tax is a stabilizing pace layer at Gusto: continuity and trust are paramount, change is deliberate, and impact is wide. The domain is highly complex and offers the opportunity to engage in system design that simplifies this for customers.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Design, build, and test the platform that supports tax compliance for millions of people
• Help scale one of the largest Ruby/Rails and TypeScript/React applications in the world
• Collaborate on complex and ambiguous problems with partnerships from Engineering, Product Management, Design, Data Science, Compliance, Operations, and other cross-functional teams
• Improve the productivity and happiness of our teams with the services, tools, and APIs you build.
• Build guardrails into the Tax platform that enable Gusto to safely leverage agentic AI to interact with tax concepts in a way that ensures compliance, accuracy, stability, and reliability.