About Gusto
At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff—like payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR—so owners can focus on their craft and customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we’re proud to support more than 400,000 small businesses across the country, and we’re building a workplace that represents and celebrates the customers we serve. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.
About the Role:
As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Embedded Payroll team, you'll be a key technical leader responsible for influencing the team and broader organization as we build and scale our product. You'll do this through a combination of hands-on development in our complex codebase and guiding others to deliver a high quality platform experience.
About the Team:
Gusto Embedded Payroll is a platform that allows developers to embed payroll directly into their own software using our APIs. We've taken Gusto’s robust payroll infrastructure and made it available to third-party developers. Our vision is to enable anyone to build the best payroll product for their end customers - powering payroll for small and medium businesses across a variety of industries, from vertical SaaS to fintech and neobanks.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
- Identify and solve high-impact problems involving technical and organizational complexity that requires understanding and coordination across multiple domains.
- Engage directly with our developer-customers to deliver a remarkable payroll product.
- Influence organization-wide AI best practices for platform and API engineering, ensuring solutions are secure, compliant, and aligned with business priorities.
- Partner with developer-customers to create AI-assisted onboarding, documentation, and sample apps that accelerate time-to-first-payroll.
- Ship code. Clean, tested, and performant.
- Level up the craft of software engineering across the organization by providing technical guidance and mentoring.
- Inform and maintain best practices for reliability and observability for the team.
- Troubleshoot and resolve production issues.
Here’s what we're looking for:
- 12+ years of professional software development experience with a track record of driving impact at scale.
- Proven ability to take ownership of company-wide engineering initiatives and contribute to scaling engineering organizations.
- Deep experience working across large, complex codebases and comfort operating at multiple layers of abstraction.
- Demonstrated success in designing and building platforms, services, and APIs with a focus on reliability, scalability, and performance.
- Curiosity in an AI-native engineering environment. Leveraging intelligence, automation, and experimentation to design, ship, and operate reliable, partner-facing payroll APIs at scale.
- History of mentoring engineers, raising the technical bar, and guiding teams through ambiguous problems and competing priorities.
- Ability to connect technical decisions to business priorities, align teams around the right goals, and effectively communicate tradeoffs and technical needs to business stakeholders.
Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $200,000-$230,000 /yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $230,000-$270,000 /yr for San Francisco, Seattle & New York. 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.
Top Skills
Gusto San Francisco, California, USA Office
Gusto's San Francisco office is located in a vibrant, up-and-coming area nestled between Potrero Hill and the bay. Formerly a shipbuilding hub dating back to the 1800s, this dockside area retains an industrial vibe. Gusties drive, bike, or take public transportation to our office.
Similar Jobs at Gusto
What you need to know about the San Francisco Tech Scene
Key Facts About San Francisco Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 365,500; 13.9% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Google, Apple, Salesforce, Meta
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, fintech, consumer technology, software
- Funding Landscape: $50.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins
- Research Centers and Universities: Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; University of San Francisco; Santa Clara University; Ames Research Center; Center for AI Safety; California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
