Staff Software Engineer, Tax Accounts

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

Job summary

Gusto is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Tax Accounts team, building systems for tax accounts, automation with tax agencies, and complex compliance rules. You will mentor engineers, partner with product and design, and help deliver reliable, scalable solutions at scale.

You will lead multi-quarter projects and own high-impact work in a fast-growing fintech environment, with opportunities to leverage AI tooling to accelerate development and testing while maintaining top-tier data

Qualifications

• Significant software-development experience, typically 8+ years, with staff-level technical leadership.
• Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and deliver measurable customer impact at scale.
• Experience building scalable solutions that reduce customer pain and ensure reliability, performance, and correctness.
• Comfort designing data models and APIs for a complex, rules-heavy domain where edge cases matter.
• Experience leveraging AI tools to accelerate development, test, and deliver new capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and test systems behind employer and employee tax accounts and related tax setup.
• Build automation to interact with tax agencies and maintain data accuracy across jurisdictions.
• Model complex compliance rules into maintainable systems; own reliability and performance.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, Tax Operations, and PEO teams to translate needs into solutions.
• Mentor engineers and tackle hard problems in a large-scale domain.
• Build products that customers genuinely love.

Skills

Staff leadership

Domain modeling

Data modeling

APIs design

AI tooling

Mentoring

Cross-team collab

Tools

Ruby on Rails

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.

About The Role

We're looking for a staff software engineer to join Tax Accounts — the team whose job is to make the complexity of dealing with hundreds of tax agencies disappear. We're the steward of every Gusto customer's employer and employee tax account data: the registrations, authorizations, rates, and setup that let us withhold, pay, and file correctly on their behalf. Get it right and businesses stay compliant without thinking about it; get it wrong and it costs them real money and trust.

Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day

• Design, build, and test the systems behind employer and employee tax accounts: agency registrations, power-of-attorney / third-party authorizations, tax notices, agency filings, and state/federal/employee tax setup across jurisdictions
• Build automation that requests and maintains access with tax agencies on the customer's behalf — the bots, data exchanges, and agency-event pipelines that keep accounts, rates, and deposit schedules accurate and prevent failed filings
• Model complex, jurisdiction-specific compliance rules into maintainable systems, and own reliability, performance, and correctness in a domain where accuracy is non-negotiable
• Partner closely with Product, Design, Tax Operations, and PEO teams to turn customer and compliance pain into solutions — then prototype, iterate, and launch
• Mentor other engineers and help the team solve some of the hardest problems in a very complex domain, at large scale
• Build products that our customers genuinely love

Here’s What We’re Looking For

• Significant software-development experience, typically 8+ years, with demonstrated staff-level technical leadership
• Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and make measurable customer impact at scale
• Experience building scalable solutions that eliminate customer pain, and a strong sense of ownership over reliability, performance, and correctness
• Comfort designing data models and APIs for a complex, rules-heavy domain (compliance, tax, payments, or similar) where edge cases and correctness matter
• Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver new capabilities — plus curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks, and a habit of sharing best practices to scale AI use safely across the team
• Ability to mentor engineers to maximize their performance and impact
• Ability to communicate effectively across engineering teams and with business stakeholders

Nice To Have

• 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 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.

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.