Principal Software Engineer, Growth

About Gusto

At Gusto were on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stufflike payroll health insurance 401(k)s and HRso owners can focus on their craft and customers. With teams in Denver San Francisco and New York were proud to support more than 400000 small businesses across the country and were building a workplace that represents and celebrates the customers we serve. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

About the Role:

As Gusto transitions to an AI-native company this role will help shape how intelligence is embedded across our Growth platform from acquisition to onboarding to expansion. Youll lead engineering efforts that make our systems adaptive data-driven and intelligent by design.

This means building not only for scale and reliability but for learning and continuous optimization where every part of the funnel can reason predict and personalize. Youll operate at the intersection of Growth systems AI capabilities and platform evolution to help unlock Gustos next phase of sustainable revenue growth.

About the Team:

Were accelerating Gustos revenue growth by providing 1.) an acquisition platform for driving visitors and leads 2.) an onboarding platform for converting leads to customers and 3.) upsell systems for expansion efforts. Were also in an exciting phase of rebuilding our Revenue Systems stack which will be key in unlocking Gustos next phase of growth.

Our focus is shifting from deterministic user journeys to intelligent growth systems ones that understand intent tailor experiences and continuously improve through data and feedback.

Were looking for a strategic and motivated engineering leader to empower and scale the engineering teams that are building Gustos next big thing!

Heres what youll do day-to-day:

• Define iterate and execute on initiatives contributing to Growths technical roadmap to drive revenue growth.
• Champion AI-native patterns in Growth systems designing for learning loops feedback-driven iteration and safe model usage in customer-facing contexts.
• Help establish best practices for experimentation evaluation and observability in AI-augmented Growth experiences.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to tackle complex and ambiguous problems translating them into engineering solutions that drive our customer acquisition and ACV expansion platform forward.
• Collaborate with AI platform and data science teams to integrate model-driven insights into Growth workflows such as lead scoring onboarding personalization intelligent upsell recommendations and AI/ML-driven comms platform.
• Execute in different horizons based on Growths overall goals. This means at times embedding in a team for multiple months/quarters to deliver complex projects and at other times kicking off ambiguous initiatives and helping teams drive alignment and build momentum.
• Execute in different capacities based on the needs of the org and initiative. Dive deep into the hardest technical areas while delegating the rest to partnering teams.
• Engage with all development teams across Gusto to align and drive towards long-term maintainability and stability of our systems.
• Mentor and provide guidance to software engineers fostering growth and development.
• Actively participate in code reviews and maintain code quality.

Heres what were looking for:

• 12 years of professional software development experience.
• Curiosity and ability to operate in an AI-native environment integrating intelligence automation and experimentation into how we grow the business.
• Hands-on experience building large-scale complex systems in a wide range of domains.
• Web architecture expertise including observability and performance.
• Experience in highly cross-functional environments for highly complex products.
• Experience as tech lead overseeing large initiatives across multiple teams.
• Experience in scaling Engineering organizations.
• Nice to have:
  
  • Experience designing or implementing product experiences incorporating ML and AI from recommendations to intelligent onboarding or personalization systems.
  • Experience building complex revenue systems that span multiple growth areas: acquisition expansion experimentation marketing and sales automation tools/integrations.
  • Experience in experimentation and user experience optimization.
  • Experience working closely with Revenue teams.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $215000/yr to $252000/yr in Denver & most remote locations and $251000/yr to $295000/yr for San Francisco Seattle & 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 Gustos 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 its 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.

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