Head of Product, Core Experiences Platform

About the Role:

Gusto seeks an experienced Product leader to oversee and drive our Core Experiences platform products and team. As a key member of the Core Experiences group, you will assume end-to-end responsibility for the logic and intelligence engines that abstract complexity and power cross-product workflows for all of Gusto’s products, in addition to being responsible for shaping how our key experience engines enable cohesive, proactive, AI-first customer journeys. The engines are composed of multiple charters, with scope for expansion, currently covering reporting, compliance, permissions, and onboarding experiences. Beyond the platform focus, this role will also drive a new vision, strategy, and roadmap for a primary customer experience. Job-to-be-done: understanding which actions are required across all of Gusto’s services and how AI will influence them. This is a critical area for Gusto, our current customers, and our future vision.

If you are a customer-centric builder who thrives on making a substantial impact within a high-growth organization, we would be thrilled to hear from you!

About the Team:

The Core Experiences Platform teams encompass the foundational data models, APIs, and UX concepts (or “commons”) that teams across Gusto leverage to build high-quality, cohesive experiences at scale. We think globally about how to craft a thoughtful system of apps and experiences — considering the full stack — so that App teams can focus more locally on solving their unique jobs to be done. This work is critical to ensuring that Gusto functions and feels like one integrated, connected experience, where concepts, data, and UX patterns have shared meaning and where customers can build their own understanding and confidence because the experience is predictable, consistent, AI-first, easy to use, and feels custom-built for the unique needs of their business.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Own the vision and strategy. Set the long-term direction of the Core Experiences platform teams and product experiences — defining the big problems we can solve well and building toward a durable competitive advantage. You’ll do this by continuously uncovering and deeply understanding customer needs, testing risky assumptions, running lean experiments, and staying close to trends and the market environment as the product evolves toward product–market fit.
• North star. Identify a common thread across all of Gusto’s product areas that can be solved with Core Experience platform offerings and create a durable competitive advantage.
• Collaborate and influence. Partner across every function — Engineering, Design, Data Science, Service Delivery, Marketing, Finance, and more — to bring your bold vision to life. You’ll rally cross-functional teams and leaders around a shared strategy, building alignment and momentum to make that vision a reality.
• Make it happen. Be the pace setter. Drive execution as a boundaryless builder with end-to-end ownership. You will use AI as your co-builder to turn complex problems into durable, customer-loved solutions with urgency and care.
• Institutionalize and scale AI-native practices across teams: Make AI a core part of how your teams and partners discover, build, and deliver products. Lead the design and adoption of AI-powered workflows, tools, and processes — and coach PMs and cross-functional partners to apply them effectively and responsibly. Create reusable frameworks, playbooks, and best practices that raise the bar for AI fluency and execution across the organization.

Here’s what we're looking for:

• Possess 10+ years of hands-on product development leadership experience within an R&D team in a modern technology business.
• Direct prior platform product leadership
• Demonstrated Platform experience and a combination of systems thinking, user empathy, and a vision-driven approach to Platform product management
• A proven track record of driving impact with both 0 to 1 and at-scale products within a multi-product company.
• Expertise in identifying and understanding patterns across interconnected systems
• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to lead through influence and inspire cross-functional teams in high-stakes environments 
• Display strong strategic thinking skills, capable of evaluating multiple paths, making effective tradeoffs, and articulating a clear and compelling forward plan.
• The ability to tell a compelling story that drives alignment and inspires action.
• Strong collaboration skills; ability to quickly build trust.
• A passion for helping small businesses.
• You’re a builder at heart — entrepreneurial, curious, fluent, and staying up to date on AI tools that help you move faster and think bigger.
• Experienced in building with modern AI systems — from prompting and fine-tuning to evaluating outputs and shipping reliable, user-facing experiences.
• Coach and multiplier of AI craft – You mentor PMs and cross-functional leaders to build AI fluency — both in how they evolve business and product strategies to use AI for customer and business impact, and in how they integrate AI into daily work. You drive systematic adoption of AI practices that increase execution speed, decision quality, and customer value at scale.

If you don't think you meet all of the criteria above but still are interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box, and we're looking for someone excited to join the team.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is $206,000/yr to $248,000/yr in Denver & most major metro locations, and $243,000/yr to $292,000/yr for San Francisco, Seattle & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate location, experience, and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.