Staff Backend Engineer, Payroll Platform — APIs & Scale

Gusto; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 163,000 - 247,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (RSUs)

Job summary

Gusto is hiring a Staff Software Engineer for the Payroll Platform backend. You will design and evolve internal APIs and services used across product teams to deliver accurate, compliant payroll at scale.

Expect collaboration with multiple engineering groups to raise the bar on reliability and performance. We value strong system design, ownership of critical domains, and use of AI tools to boost productivity.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering, backend focus.
• Experience building scalable internal platforms and APIs.
• Familiar with AI-assisted development tools and adoption.
• Strong collaboration across product, design, data, and compliance.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs that support core payroll workflows and are consumed by multiple Gusto engineering teams.
• Own a primary domain within the Payroll Platform, ensuring health, correctness, scalability and evolution.
• Act as a technical partner to other engineering teams, guiding platform adoption and scalable solutions.
• Author and drive architecture/design documents, balancing near-term delivery with long-term goals.
• Improve system performance, reliability, and observability as payroll scales to many businesses.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Design, Data, Compliance, and Operations.
• Routinely leverage AI-assisted development tools to accelerate development and improve quality.

Skills

Backend development

System design

AI tools usage

Cross-team collaboration

Independent work

Job description

Gusto is hiring a Staff Software Engineer for the Payroll Platform backend. You will design and evolve internal APIs and services used across product teams to deliver accurate, compliant payroll at scale.

Expect collaboration with multiple engineering groups to raise the bar on reliability and performance. We value strong system design, ownership of critical domains, and use of AI tools to boost productivity.