Staff Software Engineer, HR Experiences

Gusto; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 199,000 - 247,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (RSUs)

Job summary

Gusto is on a mission to grow the small business economy by handling payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR for 500,000+ small businesses nationwide. As a Staff Software Engineer on the HR Experience team, you will shape features end-to-end, build frontend and backend systems, and drive product direction with ownership after launch.

We value AI fluency and collaboration across Product, Data, Design, and Platform teams.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software development experience.
• Experience in regulated, compliance-heavy domains (HR/payroll) preferred.
• Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems at scale.
• Ability to mentor engineers and collaborate across teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and test across Gusto's HR experience — employer-facing documents and guidance tools, and employee-facing side.
• Build AI tools and agents to scale Gusto's HR Partners team, automating compliance and document workflows.
• Mentor other engineers to solve hard technical problems at scale.
• Collaborate with Product Management, Data, Design, and Platform Engineering to understand customer pain points, prototype, iterate, and launch.
• Build products that our customers love.

Skills

8+ years software development

Ruby on Rails

AI tools / agentic coding

Project leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

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.

We're looking for seasoned full-stack software engineers to join Gusto's HR Experience team.

Half the American workforce works at a small business, and most of those businesses can't afford a real HR team. When they hit an HR decision they don't have the expertise for — a termination, a comp change, setting a time-off policy for the first time — they either pay for expensive outside help or guess, even though the right answer depends on rules that vary across 50 states and hundreds of localities. HR Experience is building that expertise directly into Gusto: compliant HR guidance and documentation, built natively for both the employer creating it and the employee receiving it, in a domain where the compliance bar is real — 'mostly right' isn't good enough.

You'll also help drive the other half of HR Experience's mission: using AI to make Gusto's human HR Partners faster and more effective, so more small businesses can get real HR support without needing to hire their own HR team.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll operate across the full product lifecycle: shaping features from early spec and design through to launch and long-term iteration. That means writing clean frontend code, designing and building reliable backend APIs, influencing product direction, and taking ownership of what happens after a feature ships.

If you're drawn to work that combines technical craft with real-world impact — helping small businesses get HR infrastructure they can actually rely on — join us!

Here's what you'll do day-to-day:

• Design, build, and test across Gusto's HR experience — the employer-facing document and guidance tools, and the employee-facing side of that same experience
• Build AI tools and agents that help scale Gusto's HR Partners team, automating the compliance and document workflows human HR partners handle today
• Mentor other engineers to help solve some of the hardest technical problems out there in very complex domains and at a large scale
• Collaborate with our Product Management, Data, Design, and Platform Engineering teams to understand customer pain points, come up with solutions, and then prototype, iterate, and launch
• Build products that our customers genuinely love

Here's what we're looking for:

• Successful applicants typically have 8+ years of software development experience
• Compliance/HR Domain Expertise (Preferred): experience building products in regulated, compliance-heavy domains (HR, payroll, benefits, tax, or similar), especially where requirements vary by state or locality
• Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and make measurable customer impact at scale
• Experience driving large, cross-functional projects end-to-end through ambiguity — scoping, sequencing, and unblocking without needing the problem pre-broken-down; aligning multiple stakeholders and working with multiple teams
• Actively uses agentic coding tools (for example, Claude Code or Codex) as part of your daily engineering workflow, and has used them to meaningfully accelerate yourself and others
• Experience with, or strong interest in, building agents and MCP tools — and judgment about applying them safely in domains where 'mostly right' isn't good enough
• Ability to mentor engineers to maximize their performance and impact

Others:

• Experience in, or interest working in, Ruby on Rails
• Appreciation for a collaborative, test-driven environment
• Ability to build well-structured, maintainable, well-documented code
• Ability to effectively communicate across engineering teams and with business stakeholders

Please note that travel to Gusto's office for onboarding is required for this position. If you have any questions regarding this requirement, please share with your recruiter.

Our cash compensation range for this role is $199,000–$247,000 for San Francisco & New York. Stock equity is additional. 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.

If you’ll require this employer to commence, i.e., “sponsor,” an immigration or work permit case in order to employ you, either now or at some point in the future, then you should answer yes. An example of an immigration or work permit case that may require sponsorship now or in the future would be an H-1B or other employment-based work permit sponsorship.

Voluntary Self-Identification

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it helps us to build better products, better serve our customers, and makes our company stronger.

In addition to the information required to consider your application, below is a set of demographic questions that help us identify areas for improvement in our process and further support the development and execution of our diversity efforts and programs as well as to create a more inclusive environment for all employees.

Your responses to these questions will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file. Your responses, or your wish not to answer, will not be associated with your specific application, will not be shared with hiring managers, and will not in any way be used in making any employment decisions, including hiring decisions.

Please use this as a reference while completing the disability self-identification:

• Blindness
• Deafness
• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Epilepsy
• Autism
• Cerebral palsy
• HIV/AIDS
• Bipolar disorder
• Multiple sclerosis (MS)
• Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Impairments requiring the use of a wheelchair