Staff Software Engineer, Tax Experiences

jobr.pro; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 163,000 - 247,000; Full time

Job summary

Gusto is hiring a senior software engineer to join the Tax Engineering team, shaping the end-to-end experience for tax information processing. You will collaborate with engineers, product managers, designers, data scientists, and compliance to build scalable, reliable tax and payroll workflows.

You will lead technical strategy, design, and code quality while incorporating AI tools to improve development and testing, contributing to a highly productive and innovative engineering culture.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with expertise in React, TypeScript, as well as experience with Ruby on Rails, SQL, or other backend languages.
• Experience in Payroll, Taxes, or Compliance preferred.
• Experience in large, complex codebases and improving them incrementally without breaking things.
• Experience applying AI tools to accelerate development, improve code quality, and build testing.
• Strong ability to communicate technical complexity to product and design partners, and collaborate across teams.

Responsibilities

• Execute on the technical strategy for your team's domain in alignment with OKRs and contribute to the broader Tax Engineering roadmap.
• Design, build, and test the experience that enables people to add and update their tax information at Gusto.
• Advocate for customers to ensure accurate tax collection, calculation, and filing.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across Engineering, Product, Design, Data Science, Compliance, and Operations.
• Mentor and grow engineers to create scalable solutions.
• Drive product development from concept to launch, delivering payroll, taxes, and compliance features.

Skills

React

TypeScript

Ruby on Rails

SQL

AI tools

Team collaboration

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 Team

We’re a small group of talented engineers, designers, data scientists, and product managers working to improve the experience of collecting, calculating, paying, and filing taxes. Our team aims to make the complexity of dealing with hundreds of tax agencies disappear and to make compliance easy.

We own everything a customer sees and does around taxes: from onboarding through ongoing account management, payments, and filings. We make sure that communication about those experiences is clear and actionable, and that the underlying systems are reasonable and sustainable to build on.

This team is responsible for the full stack of work, not just the frontend. We implement work up and down the stack to build these delightful experiences, and we partner regularly with all of the teams in the Tax Organization and many teams outside of it as well.

This is one of the most important teams at Gusto. Most companies know how to pay their people, but many companies don’t know how to properly withhold, pay, or file taxes. One of the reasons that they pay for Gusto every month is the exact product that we provide.

Responsibilities

• Execute on the technical strategy for your team's domain in alignment with team and group‑level OKRs, and contribute to the broader Tax Engineering roadmap through collaboration.
• Design, build, and test the experience that enables people to add and update their tax information at Gusto.
• Advocate for the needs of our customers, employers and employees who rely on Gusto to ensure that their taxes are collected, calculated, and filed correctly.
• Collaborate on complex and ambiguous problems with partnerships across Engineering, Product Management, Design, Data Science, Compliance, Operations, and other cross‑functional teams.
• Support the software platform that powers multiple 1st and 3rd party products and serves millions of businesses.
• Mentor and grow fellow engineers working to create holistic and scalable solutions.
• Drive the product development process from concept to launch, delivering delightful products that make payroll, taxes, and compliance simple and easy.
• Improve the productivity and happiness of our teams with the design systems, components, and interfaces you build.
• Engage in a highly supportive environment working with others to drive productivity and innovation.
• Identify and prioritize long‑term investments to improve foundational systems and architecture.
• Apply AI tools as a regular part of your engineering workflow, and bring an AI‑native lens to product decisions: identify where AI can reduce customer effort, simplify complex tax workflows, and surface proactive guidance before customers know they need it.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with expertise in React, TypeScript, as well as experience with Ruby on Rails, SQL, or other backend languages.
• Experience in one of these domains is preferred: Payroll, Taxes, or Compliance.
• 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.
• An aptitude and interest in bringing clarity and simplicity to complex and ambiguous problems.
• Experience applying AI tools to accelerate development, improve code quality, and build testing. Familiar with AI‑assisted development workflows.
• A preference for working collaboratively with people, not in a silo. Pairing, thought partnership, and shared investigation feel natural, not like overhead.
• Able to communicate technical complexity clearly to product and design partners, and help the team navigate tradeoffs with full context.
• Strong systems thinking: the ability to build mental models of unfamiliar systems, ask the right questions, and produce clear analysis that others can act on.

Requirements

Please note that a two‑day travel to a Gusto 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.

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.

EEO Statement

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.