Sr. Staff Software Engineer, Pay Group Engineering

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:

Were hiring seasoned engineers to join our teams that work on core platform capabilities improving our existing systems for extensibility and scalability and building the future of Gustos Payroll system. As a Gusto Software Engineer at this level youll be guiding projects end-to-end by influencing initial feature specs understanding how to take existing systems closer to desired end states executing on projects and maintaining code that powers core experiences. If youre interested in building elegant software with far-reaching effects in our modern economy join us!

About the Team:

Payroll is the beating heart of Gustos business. The Pay Group teams are responsible for the product ops and service components Gusto uses to onboard customers process payrolls calculate taxes & deductions pay and file with tax agencies and maintain compliance on behalf of the customers. The domain is highly complex and offers the opportunity to engage in system design that simplifies this for customers both internal and external.

SubTeams

• Contractors EOR: The Contractors EOR team is building the best platform for businesses to hire pay and manage their entire workforcewhether theyre contractors employees or international teammates. We make contractor payments fast reliable and compliant while simplifying workflows for employers with powerful tools like automated payments reimbursements and bulk onboarding. Beyond payments were creating seamless experiences for international employees through payroll onboarding and compliance solutions that scale across borders. Together our mission is to position Gusto as the go-to platform for small and mid-sized businesses to confidently support every member of their team no matter where they work.
• Payroll: Payroll is the core of Gustos business ensuring employees are paid accurately on time and in compliance with complex regulations. Our teams design and maintain the infrastructure and customer experiences that make payroll simple and reliable. From setup through submission we build intuitive systems that help business owners run payroll with confidence.
• Tax: The Tax team ensures Gusto customers remain compliant and confident by managing every aspect of payroll taxesincluding setupcalculation payments filings and year-end communications. We design seamless end-to-end experiences that simplify complex processes and build the infrastructure that keeps taxes accurate and on time. By combining reliable systems with thoughtful design our team makes one of the most complicated parts of running a business simple for employers.
• Time: The Time team builds trusted intuitive tools that make it easy for businesses to schedule track and manage their teams. From scheduling shifts and managing availability to tracking hours and time off we deliver smart compliant solutions that reduce complexity for employers while empowering employees. By embedding automation and mobile-first workflows we transform how time is managedso teams can focus on what matters most.
  
  

Heres what youll do day-to-day:

• Design build and test the foundation that supports compliant payroll for millions of people
• Help scale one of the largest Ruby/Rails and TypeScript/React applications in the world
• Collaborate on complex and ambiguous problems with partnerships from Engineering Product Management Design Data Science Compliance Operations and other cross-functional teams
• Build 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 services tools and APIs you build.
• Engage in a highly supportive environment working with others to drive productivity and innovation
• Own and drive the technical strategy and roadmap for your domain in alignment with team and group-level OKRs
• Identify and prioritize long-term investments to improve foundational systems and architecture
• Lead improvements to incident response processes tooling and culture to enhance system reliability and team effectiveness

Heres what were looking for:

• Successful applicants have at least 12 years of experience
• Experience in designing and developing robust distributed systems using multiple general-purpose programming languages
• Experience influencing and guiding the work of multiple teams on scaling refactoring and optimizing legacy products
• Experience architecting building and testing large-scale production level code
• An aptitude and interest in bringing clarity and simplicity to complex and ambiguous problems
• Ability to communicate technical complexity and help facilitate informed tradeoffs
• Enthusiasm for a collaborative test-driven environment
• Able to build maintainable structured well-documented code
• Experience building fault-tolerant mission-critical software
• Experience building products in highly regulated domains is desired but not required
• Experience in one of these domains is preferred: Payroll Taxes or Compliance
• Experience creating prompt libraries for common patterns
• Mentors engineers on effective AI usage.
• Familiar with current AI tools (LLMs Cursor Copilot Agents) and their shortcomings / benefits
• Embeds AI in daily development workflow (scaffolding tests summarizing docs) to measurably reduce cycle time.
• Mentors engineers on effective AI usage and helps develop an AI strategy for other engineers
• Bonus: Experience with Ruby on Rails Typescript and React

Please note that travel to Gustos Denver 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 $189000/yr to $236000/yr in Denver & most remote locations and $223000/yr to $278000/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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