Staff Product Designer, HR Experiences

Gusto; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 177,000 - 222,000; Full time

Job summary

Gusto, a leader in payroll and HR software, is seeking a Product Designer for HRX to shape AI-native HR experiences end to end, balancing product outcomes with user trust.

You will work with PM, engineering, and data to define direction; oversee journey mapping, two-sided service design, and craft high-quality interfaces while managing uncertainty and human overrides.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of product design experience in a B2B SaaS environment with strong craft across web.
• Experience designing AI-enabled or conversational experiences shipped to real users with handling uncertainty, errors, and human override.
• Experience in service design for multi-stakeholder products with journey mapping and blueprinting.
• Judgment to evaluate and direct AI outputs, knowing when to use or override them and how to raise the bar in high-stakes contexts.
• Comfort with ambiguity—framing problems, scoping work, and advancing without perfect information.
• Strong collaboration across design, product, engineering, and data teams.

Responsibilities

• Shape AI-native HR experiences end to end—customer requests drive product delivery.
• Lead service design across two-sided experiences, mapping journeys and coordinating handoffs between customer, AI, and human experts.
• Make and defend judgments about AI outputs, deciding when to ship or when to keep a human in the loop.
• Ground work in a specific customer and maintain a high craft bar from strategy to pixel-level execution.
• Partner with PM, engineering, and data as a co-owner of product direction and clarify ambiguous problems early.
• Work in fast cycles: set targets, ship real features, and learn to sharpen direction.
• Conduct and direct user and HR expert research to validate decisions in high-stakes domains.

Skills

Product design experience

AI-enabled design

Service design

Judgment in AI outputs

Ambiguity tolerance

Collaboration and communication

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.

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 (RSU) — 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

At Gusto, HR Experiences (HRX) helps small businesses get expert HR help right inside the product. Instead of hunting through forms and menus — or Googling what the law requires — a customer can simply say what they need, and Gusto does the rest: taking the action, answering the question, or bringing in a human expert when the stakes are high.

As a Product Designer on HRX, you'll shape these AI-native experiences end to end, in a domain where getting it right builds real trust — and getting it wrong has real consequences for our customers. That's exactly why judgment, taste, and craft matter here in a way they don't in lower-stakes products.

About The Team

HRX is building the guidance and service layer that turns HR from a source of tension into a source of confidence for small businesses. We design across the full experience — the everyday self-serve moments, the AI that guides and does the work, and the human HR experts who step in when it matters most — so it all feels like one Gusto.

Gusto Design Is Operating In An AI-native Way, And HRX Is One Of The Teams Fostering That Hardest. We Expect Designers Here To Bring AI Fluency In Two Directions

• AI in your workflow. Using AI to explore ideas, prototype, and synthesize research — so you progress faster without losing craft.
• AI in the product. Designing the experience of AI outputs — representing uncertainty, surfacing errors gracefully, preserving user agency when a recommendation conflicts with best practice, and knowing when a human should step in.

Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day

• Shape AI-native HR experiences end to end — where the customer says what they need and the product delivers the right outcome, without exposing the underlying complexity.
• Lead service design across a two-sided experience — journey mapping and blueprinting the routing and handoffs between the customer, the AI, and human HR experts.
• Make and defend judgment calls about AI outputs — when they're ready to ship, when to keep a human in the loop, and when they shouldn't ship at all — designing for failure so trust holds in the hard moments.
• Ground the work in a specific customer and hold a high craft bar from strategy through pixel-level execution.
• Partner with PM, engineering, and data as a co-owner of product direction — framing ambiguous problems early and spearheading clarity when the picture isn't yet clear.
• Work in fast cycles: set a clear target for an experience, ship real things to customers, and let what you learn sharpen the direction.
• Conduct and direct research with customers and HR experts to validate decisions in a high‑stakes, compliance‑sensitive domain.

What You’ll Need

Here’s what we’re looking for:

• 6+ years of product design experience owning and shipping work in a B2B SaaS environment, with robust craft across web.
• Experience designing AI-enabled or conversational experiences shipped to real users — and you can speak concretely to how you handled uncertainty, errors, and human override.
• Experience in service design for products with two sides or multiple stakeholders. You should have real journey mapping and blueprinting experience. This includes operational handoffs and should not be limited to workshop exercises.
• Judgment to evaluate and direct AI outputs — knowing when to use them, when to override them, and how to raise the bar — especially where the cost of being wrong is high.
• Comfort with ambiguity — you frame the problem, scope the work, and proceed forward without waiting for perfect information.
• Well‑developed collaboration and communication across design, product, engineering, and data.

Bonus points

• Experience in a high‑stakes or regulated domain — HR, compliance, fintech, legal, or healthcare.
• Helped lead a team's shift to AI-native workflows, and can speak to what changed about the work itself, not just the tools.
• Background contributing to AI governance, evaluation practices, or AI experience design patterns.
• Experience designing for internal or expert users (advisors, agents, support staff) alongside customer‑facing surfaces.

Compensation Details

At Gusto, we strive to provide rewards that empower employees to achieve their financial and personal goals. We offer competitive compensation packages with a strong emphasis on equity based compensation (ownership in Gusto). To learn more about Gusto’s compensation philosophy and benefits offerings please view our Total Rewards Approach page.

Our cash compensation range for this role is $146,000/yr to $183,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $177,000/yr to $222,000/yr in San Francisco, Seattle & New York. 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.

Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.

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