Frontend Full Stack Staff Software Engineer, Gusto
AI Platform Experiences
$163-247k
2-3 days a week in office
Automated payroll, benefits & HR platform
Be an early applicant
Automated payroll, benefits & HR platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$163-247k
2-3 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To grow the small business economy.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of software development experience, with 4+ years building scalable platforms or high-impact customer-facing products
- Strong foundation in front-end engineering and modern web technologies (Ruby on Rails, React, GraphQL, or similar full-stack frameworks) with ability to build well-structured, maintainable code
- Track record of owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and deliver measurable customer impact at scale
- Experience building internal platforms or developer-facing infrastructure that enables other teams to self-serve and ship AI-powered features
- Excellent cross-functional communication skills with ability to mentor engineers and collaborate effectively across teams and stakeholders
- Product-minded, customer-facing engineering approach with passion for creating great customer experiences and ownership over performance, reliability, and quality
- Bonus if you have AI platform development experience or strong learning orientation toward AI technologies, patterns, and frameworks (orchestration, evals, prompt systems—not ML model development)
What the job involves
- We're hiring an experienced full stack engineer to help small businesses work better with AI
- You'll build Gus, Gusto's AI-powered assistant, and create scalable solutions that serve millions of users
- As a Software Engineer at this level, you'll own projects end-to-end from initial specs to deployed features—working at the intersection of modern AI capabilities and real business needs
- The Core Experience - AI Experiences team owns Gus, Gusto's AI-powered assistant, and the platform that enables teams across Gusto to deliver AI-native experiences to customers across web, mobile, voice, email, and agent-based channels
- You'll work within Gusto's AI platform infrastructure, collaborating closely with sister teams who own the underlying agent framework
- Your focus is building experiences and enabling product teams to extend and scale within the platform
- This work is directly tied to Gusto's top priorities
- We operate with fast iteration cycles, deep cross-functional collaboration, and high ownership
- Architect, build, and test technologies supporting AI experiences within Gusto's product suite
- Create standardized, self-serve patterns that enable product teams to extend Gus across web, voice, email, and agent-based experiences
- Collaborate with ML and product teams on prompt engineering, clarifying question flows, and escalation logic—using A/B tests and data to drive improvements
- Mentor engineers on complex technical challenges in AI, scalability, and platform infrastructure
- Help scale a large Ruby/Rails and React application serving millions of users
- Work with Product, Design, Security, and Technical Operations teams to understand customer needs, develop solutions, and launch features
- Build customer-facing products end-to-end that customers rely on every day
Our take
For many small businesses, vital administrative tasks such as payroll, taxes, and benefits are manual tasks that take time and energy - which many SMB owners don’t have. The co-founders of Gusto all come from small business backgrounds, which is why they created a platform that would handle employee payments, benefits administration, and compliance support specifically for small businesses.
The company may have started slowly, as the founders focused on nailing each individual aspect of Gusto’s operations, but has now skyrocketed to unicorn status with more than 400,000 customers and a multi-billion dollar valuation. And in 2021, Gusto began acquiring other companies to strengthen its offering and position in a competitive market, including the likes of Ardius, Symmetry and Guideline.
Through its continued acquisitions and fundraising efforts, the company has carved out a strong position for itself in the space. It continues to expand its platform, for example by partnering with Parafin to launch a payroll line of credit for small businesses, and more recently launching Cofounder, an AI teammate tailored to the needs of small businesses.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
45% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
May 2022
$55m
SERIES E
Aug 2021
$175m
SERIES E
Total funding: $706.3m
Company benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents
- Family care and support, including family planning and fertility benefits
- Gender-affirming care and support
- A variety of mental health resources
- Paid vacation, sick time, bereavement, and holidays, paid leaves, sabbatical, and more
- Free meals and refreshments at the office (conversation and community is an added bonus!)
Company HQ
Central Waterfront, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Joshua Reeves
(CEO & Co-Founder)Studied Electrical Engineering at Stanford and went onto co-found Gusto in 2011.
Tomer London
(CPO & Co-Founder)Has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. Was a Researcher at Intel, and then interned at Bump Technologies. Co-founded Vizmo before co-founding Gusto in 2011.
Edward Kim
(Head of Technology & Co-Founder)Studied Electrical Engineering at Stanford. Was Senior Project Engineer at Volkswagen of America Electronics Research Lab and then co-founded Picwing before co-founding Gusto in 2011.
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