Staff Software Engineer, Tax Accounts

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

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (RSUs)

Job summary

Gusto is hiring a Staff Software Engineer for the Tax Accounts team. You will own large-scale systems that manage employer and employee tax accounts, from frontend to backend APIs and data models, ensuring accuracy and reliability across jurisdictions.

You will mentor engineers, partner with Product, Design, and Tax Operations to deliver compliant solutions, and leverage AI tools to accelerate development. This role requires strong ownership and collaboration across teams.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software development with staff-level leadership.
• Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems with measurable impact at scale.
• Comfort designing data models and APIs for a complex, rules-heavy domain (compliance, tax, payments).
• Experience leveraging AI tools to accelerate development and test automation; willingness to explore new AI frameworks.
• Ability to mentor engineers and improve team performance.
• Strong communication across engineering teams and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and test systems behind employer and employee tax accounts.
• Develop automation for tax agency access and data exchanges.
• Model complex compliance rules into reliable systems with a focus on accuracy.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, Tax Operations, and PEO teams to deliver solutions.
• Mentor engineers and tackle hard problems at scale.
• Build products customers love.

Skills

Staff-level leadership

Backend API design

Data modeling

AI tooling

Mentoring

Cross-functional collaboration

Reliability and performance

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.

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 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.

As a Staff Software Engineer on Tax Accounts, you'll operate across the full product lifecycle: clean frontend code, reliable backend APIs and data models against a genuinely complex compliance domain, and the automation that keeps hundreds of thousands of accounts in sync with the agencies behind them. If you want technical craft with far-reaching impact in our modern economy helping power the livelihoods of millions of small business employees — join us.

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 scaleExperience 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.