Staff Software Engineer, Payroll Canada

Gusto; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 197,000 - 247,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (RSUs)

Competitive pay + benefits

Total Rewards philosophy

Job summary

Gusto’s Payroll Canada team is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to build core payroll capabilities for a new market from scratch. This backend-oriented role will drive complex logic with GraphQL exposure, partnering with Product and Platform to scale across Canada.

You'll own domain evolution, ensure compliance, and leverage AI tools to accelerate delivery. The team works across Canada with the Payroll Canada backend handling calculations, remittances, and compliance, connecting to the frontend.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, backend focus.
• Comfortable doing full-stack work when needed.
• Experience applying AI tools to accelerate development and testing.
• Experience with large, complex codebases and incremental improvements.
• Strong systems thinking and design skills for scalable production systems.
• Experience collaborating across Product, Design, Data, Compliance and Operations.
• Proficiency in backend languages; Ruby strongly preferred.
• Interest in payroll, tax, or compliance is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain backend services and business logic for Canadian payroll on Gusto’s Ruby on Rails platform.
• Connect backend to frontend via GraphQL APIs, coordinating with frontend engineers.
• Own a primary domain within Payroll Canada and drive correctness, scalability, and evolution.
• Partner with Product, Design, Data, Compliance, and Operations to deliver compliant solutions.
• Author and drive architecture/design documents balancing delivery and long-term goals.
• Leverage AI-assisted tooling to accelerate development, testing, and quality.

Skills

Backend development

Full-stack capability

AI-assisted development

Large codebases

Systems thinking

Cross-team collaboration

Ruby / Rails

Payroll domain interest

Tools

Ruby on Rails

GraphQL

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.

About the Role

We're hiring a Staff Software Engineer to join Gusto's Payroll Canada team, where you'll help build and scale the payroll experience for Canadian businesses. This is a 0-to-1 opportunity, meaning you'll be building core payroll capabilities for a new market largely from scratch, not just extending an established product. This is primarily a backend role which involves designing and evolving the services and business logic that power Canadian payroll with full-stack components where that logic surfaces to customers via GraphQL. You'll own complex technical problems end-to-end, partner closely with Product and Platform teams, and help bring Gusto's payroll product to a new country.

About the Team

The Payroll Canada team is building Gusto's payroll product for the Canadian market, from internal (Gusto-on-Gusto) payroll to external customers running payroll for their own employees. We own the backend services and business logic that handle Canadian payroll calculations, compliance, and remittances, and we connect that logic to the frontend through GraphQL. Our work sits at the intersection of backend product engineering and a new, fast-moving market launch, in a highly regulated domain.

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

• Design, build, and maintain backend services and business logic that power Canadian payroll — calculations, compliance, remittances, and related workflows - on Gusto’s Ruby on Rails platform
• Connect backend logic to the frontend through well-designed GraphQL APIs, partnering with frontend engineers on the full user experience
• Own a primary domain within Payroll Canada, taking responsibility for correctness, scalability, and long-term evolution as the product and customer base grow
• Act as a technical partner across Product, Design, Data, Compliance, and Operations to deliver accurate, compliant, and customer-impacting solutions
• Author and drive architecture and design documents, balancing near-term delivery with long-term platform goals as we expand in Canada
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools to accelerate development, improve code quality and testing, and help normalize and spread effective AI usage across the team

Here's what we're looking for

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on backend development
• Comfortable venturing into full-stack work when needed, even if your primary strength is backend
• Experience applying AI tools (LLMs, Claude Code, Cursor) to accelerate development, improve code quality and build testing. Comfortable helping teams adopt effective, responsible AI-assisted development workflows.
• Experience working in large, complex codebases and a demonstrated ability to improve them incrementally without breaking things. Designing, building, and testing production level code that functions at scale.
• Strong systems thinking and design skills, able to build mental models of unfamiliar systems, ask the right questions, and produce clear analysis others can act on, while designing for performance, scalability, and reliability in production.
• Experience collaborating across teams as a technical partner, communicating technical complexity clearly to product and design partners and helping the team navigate tradeoffs with full context
• Proficiency in one or more backend programming languages; experience with Ruby is strongly preferred but not required
• Interest in or experience with payroll, tax, or compliance domains a plus

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $163,000–$204,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $197,000–$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.