Staff Software Engineer, Core Platforms

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

We're looking for seasoned full-stack software engineers to join the teams behind Gusto's product platforms — the shared systems that our product teams build upon — to serve small business owners every day.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll operate across the full lifecycle of foundational systems: shaping architecture early in the design process, building self-service internal features and APIs, and owning their performance long after launch. That means engineering the core business engine, enabling product teams with reliable backend services, and setting the engineering standard for those around you.

If you're drawn to work that combines technical craft with real-world impact — helping power the livelihoods of millions using Gusto products — join us!

Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day

Design, build, and test

Gusto core platform services – communications, reporting, dashboards, access, workflows, risk, payments, and compliance capabilities, among others

Mentor other engineers to help solve some of the hardest technical problems out there in very complex domains and at a large scale

Help scale one of the largest Ruby/Rails and Javascript/React applications in the world

Collaborate with our Product Engineering, Product Management, Data, and Design teams to understand customer pain points, come up with solutions, and then

prototype, iterate, and launch daily

Build platforms that engineering teams rely on, and trust to deliver products that our

customers genuinely love

Here’s What We're Looking For

Successful applicants typically have 8+ years of software development experience

Passion for creating

scalable, efficient platforms

for users

Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver new platform capabilities

Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks

, applying and sharing best practices to evaluate and scale AI use safely across teams

Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and make measurable user impact at scale

Experience with large scale refactors, performance and reliability issues, and a strong sense of ownership over all aspects of your platform area

Ability to mentor engineers to maximize their performance and impact

Others

Experience In, Or Interest Working In, Ruby On Rails

Appreciation for a collaborative, test-driven environment

Ability to build well-structured, maintainable, well-documented code

Ability to effectively communicate across engineering teams and with business stakeholders

Do you prefer heavy feature development instead? Check out our Staff Software Engineer, Core Products job listing.

Please note that a two day travel to a Gusto 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 $163,000–$204,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $197,000–$247,000 for San Francisco & 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, 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

.