Senior Engineering Manager, Design Systems

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.

Senior Engineering Manager Design Systems

at Gusto

San Francisco New York Denver Seattle

About the Role:

Were looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the Design Systems engineering organization and shape the next generation of Gustos front-end foundation. This leader will partner closely with Design and Product leadership to define the technical roadmap scale the team and ensure our design system continues to drive quality accessibility and velocity across Gustos products.

Youll play a key role in making the design system integration-readyautomating synchronization between design code and documentation and partnering with Platform and Product teams to ensure emerging tools can build consistent accessible and on-brand interfaces across web mobile and conversational surfaces.

About the Team:

Gustos Design Systems team builds the foundation that powers every customer-facing experience at Gusto. We maintain and evolve Gustos multi-surface design systemspanning web mobile and conversational interfacesand the infrastructure accessibility standards and documentation that help every product team ship beautiful performant and consistent experiences.

The team is expanding its scope to support AI-assisted workflows and deeper integration between design code and documentation. Our goal is to make Gustos design standards directly consumable by both humans and intelligent systems simplifying how designers engineers and automated tools build cohesive experiences together.

Heres what youll do day-to-day:

• Lead and grow a world-class engineering team responsible for Gustos cross-platform design system.
• Champion AI-native development and design workflows to enable Gusto builders.
• Partner with Design leadership to define and deliver the long-term roadmap for Gustos design system spanning web mobile and conversational experiences.
• Build and scale the integrations that connect design tools codebases and documentation keeping the system a reliable single source of truth.
• Collaborate with Platform and Product teams to define how design tokens components and accessibility rules are exposed for AI-assisted design and development workflows.
• Set and uphold engineering standards for accessibility performance and reusability across all product surfaces.
• Guide the teams evolution toward supporting adaptive multi-surface experiences that look and feel consistent across Gustos ecosystem.
• Develop and mentor engineers and managers through coaching feedback and clear career growth paths.
• Foster a culture of inclusion learning and technical excellence.

Heres what were looking for:

• 12 years of software engineering experience including 5 years in engineering management
• Proven success scaling distributed front-end or design system organizations.
• Deep technical expertise in modern front-end technologies (React TypeScript CSS-in-JS accessibility tooling).
• Experience building or integrating developer platforms component APIs or design automation pipelines with AI-assisted workflows.
• Strong collaboration with Design and Product partners; ability to balance design craft with engineering scalability.
• Ability to translate design system principles into measurable business and technical impact.
  Track record of improving developer productivity UI consistency and accessibility through shared systems and tooling.
• Passion for creating inclusive human-centered experiences and enabling product teams to move faster through shared foundations.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $213000-$236000 in Denver $232000-$257000 for Los Angeles and most remote locations $251000-$278000 for San Francisco New York and Seattle. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience level 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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