Senior Staff Network Engineer, Gusto
Network Security
$230-270k
+ Stock equity
2-3 days a week in office
Automated payroll, benefits & HR platform
Open for applications
Automated payroll, benefits & HR platform
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$230-270k
+ Stock equity
2-3 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To grow the small business economy.
Role
Who you are
- The ideal candidate brings deep, hands-on Cloudflare expertise and a proven track record of hardening edge and network architectures at scale, including tuning WAF rulesets, defending through live DDoS events, and shipping Zero Trust rollouts engineers actually adopt
- You think in terms of layered defense, measurable risk reduction, and automation over manual toil
- 10+ years of hands-on security engineering experience, with significant time owning edge, network, or perimeter security at scale
- Deep, production-grade expertise with Cloudflare's security stack including WAF, DDoS, Bot Management, WARP, Gateway, and Access, covering rule tuning, incident response, and Zero Trust rollouts
- Strong network architecture skills across edge and cloud: TLS/mTLS, segmentation, egress controls, DDoS resilience, and AWS networking including VPC, Network Firewall, Shield, CloudFront, and NACLs
- Fluency with policy-as-code, Terraform, and CI/CD-first delivery of security controls; Crossplane or similar a plus
- Solid generalist foundation across cloud security, IAM, container security, and detection engineering, with hands-on incident response experience on edge and network telemetry in a modern SIEM
- AI-native working style with daily use of Claude Code or equivalent agentic tooling, and a track record of building AI-assisted workflows including custom MCP servers, agents, and LLM automations that compound team output
- Excellent written and verbal communication; you can take a complex perimeter decision and explain the tradeoffs to a staff engineer, a PM, and a VP without changing the substance
- Relevant certifications a plus including AWS Certified Advanced Networking Specialty, AWS Certified Security Specialty, Cloudflare Certified Security Associate/Professional, CKS, or equivalent
What the job involves
- We're looking for a Senior Staff Network Secruity Engineer to lead Gusto's edge and network security strategy, owning the design and operation of our Cloudflare WAF, DDoS protection, Zero Trust, and broader perimeter controls
- In this role, you'll serve as a force multiplier across the security org, partnering with infrastructure and product teams to make high-impact architectural decisions that compound over time
- Design and operate Gusto's edge security stack including Cloudflare WAF, DDoS protection, Bot Management, WARP, Gateway, and Access, tuning rules against real traffic and shaping how engineers and operations teams reach internal systems securely
- Own the network security perimeter across AWS and the edge: VPC design, Network Firewall, Shield, CloudFront, NACLs, and egress filtering, all codified in Terraform and Crossplane, observable, and consistently enforced
- Develop policy-as-code patterns for WAF rules, network policies, and edge configuration so changes ship through pull requests with review, testing, and clean rollback paths
- Build detections and alerting on edge and network telemetry including Cloudflare logs, VPC Flow Logs, and CloudTrail flowing into Panther, and lead incident response for perimeter and network events
- Contribute broadly across the security engineering surface including cloud posture, container security, IAM, vulnerability management, and on-call, bringing a strong generalist instinct to wherever the work is most critical
- Operate as an AI-native engineer, using Claude Code, MCP-driven tooling, and agentic workflows as a daily force multiplier across investigation, automation, and detection engineering
- Prototype and ship agents, custom MCP servers, and LLM-assisted automations that compress security work from days to minutes and raise the bar for what one engineer can own
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 three co-founders of Gusto – all coming from small business backgrounds – collaborated on a Fintech company 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 its position in a competitive market, including two other fintech startups, Ardius and Symmetry.
Through its continued acquisitions and fundraising efforts, the company has carved out a strong position for itself in the space. Although Gusto has found itself impacted by the macroeconomic situation, through the significant effect it has had on its clientele, the company still appears positive for the future after raising funds in 2023 that has seen it reach key profitability benchmarks. It continues to expand its platform, most recently partnering with Parafin to launch a payroll line of credit for small businesses. With a growing suite of services and a clear focus on supporting small businesses through changing economic conditions, Gusto looks set to sustain its momentum and further strengthen its position in the HR and payroll technology market.
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
- Health and Wellbeing: 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.
- Time Away: It's important to take time away for yourself or to take care of your family. Gusto offers paid vacation, sick time, bereavement, and holidays, paid leaves, sabbatical, and more!
- Free meals and refreshments: If you work at one of our offices, enjoy food, drinks, and snacks— on us. Conversation and community is an added bonus!
- Perks:
Company HQ
Central Waterfront, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Joshua Reeves
(Co-Founder & CEO)Studied Electrical Engineering at Stanford and went onto co-found Gusto in 2011.
Tomer London
(Co-Founder & CPO)Has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. Was a Researcher at Intel, and then interned at Bump Technologies. Co-founded Vizmo, a mobile self-service technologies company, in 2008. Co-founded Gusto in 2011.
Edward Kim
(Co-Founder & Head of Engineering)Studied Electrical Engineering at Stanford. Was Senior Project Engineer at Volkswagen of America Electronics Research Lab and then co-founded Picwing, a printed photos company, in 2008. Co-founded Gusto in 2011.
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