About the role

Role Overview

Join Gusto as a Staff Software Engineer working across the full product lifecycle—from early specs and design to launch and long-term iteration. You’ll help shape product direction, own outcomes after shipping, and mentor engineers while scaling Gusto’s large Ruby/Rails and JavaScript/React applications.

Responsibilities

Participate in the full product lifecycle (spec → design → build → launch → iterate)
Build and maintain frontend code
Design and build reliable backend APIs
Influence product direction and improve customer impact across multi-quarter projects
Own features end-to-end, including post-launch outcomes
Mentor other engineers on complex, large-scale technical problems
Collaborate with multiple teams to understand customer pain points and deliver solutions
Contribute to scalable refactors, performance improvements, and reliability enhancements

Requirements

8+ years of software development experience
Experience delivering scalable solutions that eliminate customer pain
Ability to lead multi-quarter projects with measurable customer impact
Strong ownership mindset across a product area
Ability to write well-structured, maintainable, well-documented code
Experience with large-scale refactors, performance, and reliability work
Appreciation for a collaborative, test-driven environment
Strong communication with engineering teams and business stakeholders
Experience with, or strong interest in, Ruby on Rails

Nice-to-haves

Experience leveraging AI tools/systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and enable new capabilities
Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks, including safe evaluation and scaling of AI use

About Gusto

Gusto is a customer-facing platform company focused on helping small businesses manage payroll, benefits, and HR needs. Its products span core workflows used by business owners and their employees every day, with engineering teams building and iterating large-scale web applications.