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
At Gusto, we are builders, and the direction the business is heading has elevated the bar for how we show up and who we hire. This role brings in that builder-minded design talent across Product Design, Design Systems, Content Design, UX Research, Service Design, Brand Studio and Creative, and Design Operations. We're looking for a Staff Design Recruiter who brings the versatility and eagerness to flex into Product Management, Data, or other technical hiring areas.
What will make you successful in this role:
You’ve recruited designers as your specialty. You are comfortable talking craft with senior Design leaders, and you already have a network and presence in the design community.
You’re an AI-fluent talent advisor. You leverage AI to shape search strategy, surface the market truth, and push back with evidence while balancing the true needs of the business. You don't just use AI, you build the agents and SKILLs that carry that advisory judgment to the whole team, so everyone moves further together.
You take an always-on approach to talent. To you, talent acquisition and relationship management are one and the same. You consistently find bar raisers and nurture relationships long before there's an open requisition.
About the team
SpecTech is the "specialized tech" recruiting team inside Gusto's Invite (talent acquisition) org. We hire builders who are responsible for Gusto's product, particularly Designers, Product Managers and Data professionals.
We don't just fill requisitions. We're talent advisors who partner closely with hiring leaders on complex searches, work sourcing-first, and are data driven. We move fast, default to warmth, and hold ourselves to a high bar on candidate experience because we believe that how someone is treated in our interview process is part of the Gusto product experience.
Here's what you'll do day-to-day
- Recruiting end to end. You run specialized, sourcing-first searches from pre-search strategy through offer acceptance and post-hire retro, across levels and craft areas. You uphold a high bar for recruiting craft.
- Talent advisory. You run tailored outbound and build bar-raiser pipelines from the start, mapping the market as you go. You turn what you learn into calibration sessions, data-backed recommendations, and clear trade-offs on factors like level, location, and compensation, so hiring leaders can make informed decisions.
- Work the whole system, not just the req. You build working relationships across compensation, people partners, candidate experience and operations. You know who to pull in and when to drive results.
- Guide candidates through an experience that resonates. High touch, honest, and caring, anchored by steady responsive communication, so people leave feeling seen, heard, and cared for, whether or not they get an offer.
- Build with AI, not just use it. You leverage AI to give yourself superpowers across top-of-funnel sourcing, market analysis, and interview prep, so your human touch lands where it matters most. You build new AI-enabled approaches, test new tools, and share what works to amplify the whole team’s impact.
- Flex into other technical searches when priorities shift. Hiring for Design is home base, but you pick up specialized PM, Data, or other technical searches when the business needs the coverage.
- Build an in-market design community in San Francisco. You bring designers together in person, showing up at and hosting local events, so Gusto is a name the SF design scene knows and your pipeline grows from real relationships, not cold lists.
What might make this hard, and worth it?
Design and specialized tech hiring at this level is competitive, with a high hiring bar, and we’re a lean team covering a wide surface area. The real challenge is the balance we aim to maintain: hiring for today’s needs, nurturing relationships for the future, and pairing operational rigor with the human judgment that keeps quality high even as you lean on AI.
What makes it worth it is you get to own the craft and partner with some of the best leaders around, working on the most critical high-visibility roles that directly impact Gusto’s growth. You do it alongside a team that genuinely cares about each other, great people who love the work and have fun doing it. If owning the end-to-end search strategy and execution is the part that energizes you, this is exactly where you want to be.
Here's what we're looking for
- Full-cycle recruiting depth. Typically 8+ years across specialized tech, including meaningful time specializing in Design recruiting.
- AI-native recruiting. Hands-on experience using AI across sourcing, market mapping, and interview prep, and building the agents or SKILLs that carry what works to the whole team.
- Cross-functional partnership. A proven ability to work across various People teams and business partners to keep hires moving.
- Executive presence. A history of partnering with leaders at every level, and the ability to walk into a room, read the audience, and speak to it with credibility.
- Data fluency. Reads, researches, and interprets data across multiple tools, turning it into a clear next move in a search and a compelling narrative for hiring partners. It’s also how you prioritize a full requisition load and catch bottlenecks before they become problems.
- Sourcing as a craft. Knows what great talent looks like, across all backgrounds and walks of life, where to find it, and how to assess it, with a knack for spotting bar raisers and building always-on pipelines.
- Bias for action and resilience. Moves things forward and stays steady when a search gets hard.
Location: San Francisco (Gusto is hybrid, roughly 2 to 3 days a week in office; the SF expectation covers the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas).
Compensation: Our cash compensation range for this role is $168,000 to $190,000 for the San Francisco Bay Area. Final offers are determined by candidate location, experience, and expertise, and may vary from the range above.
At Gusto, we don't use titles the traditional way, as a signal of rank or hierarchy. Instead, our titles describe two things at once — your craft (what you do, e.g. Engineering, Design) and your scope of ownership (what you're accountable for) — which is why you'll see something like "Head of X" instead of a rank word like "Director" that tells you neither. Because of this, the title on this posting may look different from what you'd expect based on the scope and seniority of the role, and from how similar roles are typically titled elsewhere. If you have questions about how this role compares to your current title or level, your recruiter can help translate.
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.
Reliable, consistent presence: We expect regular and predictable attendance, whether you're working in-office, hybrid, or fully remote, so that you stay closely connected to your team, customers, and stakeholders in real time and ensure colleagues and customers receive the timely support and responsiveness they deserve.
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.
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.
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