Staff Recruiter, Design & Specialized Tech

The Wrap; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity RSUs

Total Rewards benefits

Competitive base pay

Job summary

Gusto is seeking a Staff Design Recruiter who will own end-to-end recruiting for design and related technical roles within SpecTech. You will act as an AI-fluent talent advisor, partnering with design leaders to map the market and calibrate level, location, and compensation.

You will build bar-raiser pipelines, work cross-functionally with Compensation and People Partners, and ensure a warm, highly professional candidate experience while leveraging AI to improve sourcing and interview processes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years across specialized tech recruitment.
• Experience recruiting designers and design leaders.
• Ability to leverage AI tools to shape search strategy and market analysis.
• Strong relationship-building and partner with hiring leaders.

Responsibilities

• Recruiting end-to-end for design and related roles.
• Talent advisory: build bar-raiser pipelines and data-backed recommendations.
• Work cross-functionally with Compensation, People Partners, and Leadership.
• Guide candidates through a high-touch, respectful interview process.
• Build AI-enabled sourcing approaches and share learnings with the team.
• Flex into other technical searches when priorities shift, especially PM, Data.
• Foster an in-market SF design community and grow pipelines through events.

Skills

Designer recruiting

AI fluency

Talent advisory

Full-cycle recruiting

Stakeholder management

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:

Our designers are builders, and the direction the business is heading has elevated the bar for who we are and who we hire. This role brings in that builder-minded design talent across Product Design, Design Systems, Content Design, UX Research, Service Design, Brand Studio and Creative, and Design Operations. We're looking for a Staff Design Recruiter who brings the versatility and eagerness to flex into Product Management, Data, or other technical hiring areas.

What will make you successful in this role:

You’ve recruited designers as your specialty. You are comfortable talking craft with senior design leaders, and you already have a network and presence in the design community.

You’re an AI-fluent talent advisor. You leverage AI to shape search strategy, surface the market truth, and push back with evidence while balancing the true needs of the business. You don't just use AI, you build the agents and skills that carry that advisory judgment to the whole team, so everyone moves further together.

You’re always on. To you, talent acquisition and relationship management are one and the same. You consistently find bar raisers and nurture relationships long before there's an open requisition.

About the Team:

SpecTech is the "specialized tech" recruiting team inside Gusto's Invite (talent acquisition) org. We hire builders who are responsible for Gusto's product, particularly Designers, Product Managers and Data professionals.

We don't just fill requisitions. We're talent advisors who partner closely with hiring leaders on requisition-based searches, work sourcing-first, and are data driven. We move fast, default to warmth, and hold ourselves to a high bar on candidate experience because we believe that how someone is treated in our process is part of the Gusto product experience.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Recruiting end to end. You run specialized, req-based searches from pre-search strategy through offer acceptance, across levels and craft areas. You uphold a high bar for recruiting craft.
• Talent advisory. You run tailored outbound and build bar-raiser pipelines from the start, mapping the market as you go. You turn what you learn into calibration sessions, data-backed recommendations, and clear trade-offs on factors like level, location, and comp, so hiring leaders can make informed decisions.
• Work cross-functionally to achieve the goal. You build working relationships across Compensation, People Partners, Executive Operations and Candidate Experience and you know who to pull in and when, so work doesn't sit waiting.
• Guide candidates through an experience that resonates. High touch, honest, and caring, held to real SLAs, so people leave feeling seen, heard, and cared for, whether or not they get an offer.
• Build with AI, not just use it. You leverage AI to give yourself superpowers across top-of-funnel sourcing, market analysis, and the entire interview process, so your human touch lands where it matters most. You build new AI-enabled approaches, test new tools, and share what works to amplify the whole team’s impact.
• Flex into other technical searches when priorities shift. Hiring for design is home base, but you pick up specialized Product Management, Data, or other technical searches when the business needs the coverage.
• Build an in-market design community in San Francisco. You bring designers together in person, showing up at and hosting local events, so Gusto is a name the SF design scene knows and your pipeline grows from real relationships, not cold lists.

What might make this challenging, and worth it?

Design and specialized tech hiring at this level is competitive, with a high hiring bar, and we’re a lean team covering a wide surface area. The real challenge is the balance we aim to maintain: hiring for today’s needs, nurturing relationships for the future, and pairing operational rigor with the human judgment that keeps quality high even as you lean on AI.

What makes it worth it is you get to own the craft and partner with some of the best leaders around, working on the most critical roles that directly impact Gusto’s growth. You do it alongside a team that genuinely cares about each other, great people who love the work and have fun doing it. If owning the end-to-end search, strategy and execution is the part that energizes you, this is exactly where you want to be.

Here’s what we're looking for:

• Full-cycle recruiting depth. Typically 8+ years across specialized tech,