Senior Staff Product Designer (Finance)

Gusto; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Gender-affirming care

Family care benefits

Mental health resources

Insurance for employees and dependents

Free meals

Paid time off

Sabbatical

Job summary

Gusto is seeking a Product Designer for Finance to set the UX vision across four interconnected product areas: Business Money, Consumer Money, Payments, and Risk. You will drive opportunities that span multiple teams, craft a cohesive experience, and define what AI-first financial UX looks like at scale.

You’ll work as a direct IC on high-priority projects, develop other designers, and contribute platform patterns that scale beyond Money and Risk. A fintech background is a plus.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of Product Design experience and leadership across multiple teams.
• Ability to define UX vision across Money and Risk domains.
• Experience shaping product strategy alongside directors and engineers.

Responsibilities

• Set the UX vision and strategy across Money and Risk.
• Identify high-impact opportunities spanning multiple pods.
• Coach and mentor designers to raise craft and impact.
• Champion and evolve Gusto’s design system and platform standards.

Skills

Design leadership

AI in design

Design systems

Cross-team collaboration

Mentoring

Fintech experience

Strategy & roadmaps

Prototyping

Tools

Figma

Prototyping tools

Job description

• The design challenge is defining what it looks like to build those products right: not just faster and smarter, but genuinely trustworthy for the hundreds of thousands of businesses and employees who depend on them
• As the Product Designer, Finance, you’ll set the UX vision and strategy across four interconnected product areas: Business Money, Consumer Money, Payments, and Risk
• Your role is to see what individual teams can’t, identifying opportunities and systemic gaps that span the full financial experience, and to drive the work that makes Gusto’s financial products feel clear, trustworthy, and empowering for hundreds of thousands of small businesses and their employees
• Nobody has fully figured out what AI-first financial UX looks like at scale. This role is the chance to define it at Gusto. This role’s level is similar to Senior Staff
• Your work will span the full scope: defining a long-term UX vision that connects financial and trust experiences across teams, identifying and driving high-impact opportunities that no single pod could tackle alone, and shaping product strategy alongside product directors and engineering leaders
• You’ll step in as a direct IC on the highest-priority projects, develop other designers, and contribute platform patt
• The Money team builds the financial products that help small businesses and their employees move, manage, and access money—from the tools owners use to run their business finances, to the financial benefits available to their teams
• As Gusto deepens its financial ecosystem, this team sits at the center of making money movement faster, simpler, and more empowering for hundreds of thousands of small businesses and the people who work for them
• The Risk team is the trust layer that makes all of it possible. They build the systems that protect customers and Gusto from fraud and financial exposure, and the identity infrastructure that determines how customers verify who they are and how they access Gusto’s financial products
• It’s foundational work: quiet when it’s working, critical when it’s not
• Together, these two teams own one of the broadest and most consequential design scopes at Gusto
• Set the UX vision and strategy across the Money and Risk teams, connecting the dots across multiple pods and ensuring a cohesive experience throughout the platform
• Identify and drive high-impact design opportunities across the Money and Risk teams, spotting what individual pods can’t see from inside their area, and bringing the right partners along to pursue them
• Influence product strategy, roadmap priorities, and team OKRs across Money and Risk through a design lens—operating as a senior design co-owner alongside product directors and engineering leaders
• Define what AI-first financial UX looks like at Gusto, including how to represent uncertainty clearly, surface errors gracefully, preserve user agency when AI recommendations are wrong, and build trust across consequential automated decisions
• Own how the Money and Risk teams build and share customer understanding: setting learning priorities, synthesizing insights across pods, and ensuring customer knowledge consistently informs direction rather than sitting siloed within individual teams
• Shape and raise the quality bar for experiences across the Money and Risk teams through hands-on design work, setting direction, and ensuring what ships reflect a high standard of craft. Step in as a direct IC on specific projects when necessary
• Develop other designers on Money and Risk through coaching, critique, and structured mentorship, acting as a force multiplier, not just a strong individual contributor
• Champion and evolve Gusto’s design system and platform standards through your product work, contributing patterns and frameworks that scale beyond Money and Risk

Benefits

• Gender-affirming care and support
• Family care and support, including family planning and fertility benefits
• A variety of mental health resources
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents
• Free meals and refreshments at the office (conversation and community is an added bonus!)
• Paid vacation, sick time, bereavement, and holidays, paid leaves, sabbatical, and more

You have a high bar for craft and stay hands-on, prototyping, iterating, and shipping alongside strategy, not just advising from above. You raise the bar for the designers around you through coaching, critique, and mentorshipYou thrive in ambiguity, lead through influence across teams, and are skilled at anticipating organizational friction, structuring how design work is coordinated across multiple teams to maximize impact and reduce dragYou actively use AI in your own design practice and can direct others to do the same, evaluating AI-generated outputs critically, knowing when to override or course-correct, and raising the quality bar on AI-assisted work across the teams you supportYou’ve designed for high-trust, high-stakes experiences where errors have real consequences and clarity is non-negotiable (e.g. payments, risk, compliance, healthcare, or similar). Fintech or financial services background is a plus10+ years of Product Design experience, with a track record of leading design direction across multiple teams, pods, or product domains simultaneously, not just a single-product or single-pod contextYou advance experience architectures and service models that span multiple teams, identifying systemic opportunities and organizational barriers, and driving changes that improve coherence and outcomes at scaleYou have a point of view on how AI is changing product design, and you’ve acted on it. You can articulate what you’ve learned and where you think it’s goingYou’ve shaped product strategy at the domain or portfolio level alongside product directors and engineering leaders, not just executed within a single product scope