Staff Software Engineer, Gusto
Embedded Payroll, Developer Experience
$220-260k
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
$220-260k
2-3 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To grow the small business economy.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of professional software development experience with demonstrated technical leadership within your team and organization. You have a track record of improving developer productivity and platform capabilities
- Strong backend engineering expertise, with deep experience working in large, production systems (Ruby on Rails experience is a plus). You're comfortable working across multiple layers of abstraction and making pragmatic tradeoffs
- You've designed APIs, platforms, or tools with developers as your primary customer. You care deeply about usability, documentation, error handling, and the end-to-end experience of building on a platform
- You've spent time mentoring engineers on your team and within the Embedded Payroll organization, raising the technical bar through code reviews, pairing, and knowledge sharing. Engineers on your team and in your group look to you for guidance on how to tackle ambiguous problems
- You think in terms of business priorities and know how to orient your team around the right technical goals for the business as well as how to convey technical constraints and needs to business leaders
- Experience applying AI tools (LLMs, Cursor, Copilot, Agents) to accelerate development, improve code quality, and deliver scalable developer-facing systems. Familiar with how AI tools can improve developer productivity and willing to mentor others on effective AI usage
What the job involves
- As a Staff Software Engineer focused on Developer Experience on the Embedded Payroll team, you'll be a key technical contributor improving how developers build on top of Gusto's payroll platform
- You'll operate at the intersection of platform engineering, API design, and developer experience working hands-on in our codebase while contributing to the direction of tooling, interfaces, and workflows that make it easier for internal teams and external partners to build reliably and efficiently
- This role requires strong technical judgment, empathy for developers and solution architects, and the ability to translate friction into scalable platform improvements
- Gusto Embedded Payroll is a platform that allows developers to embed payroll directly into their own software using our APIs
- We've taken Gusto’s robust payroll infrastructure and made it available to third-party developers
- Our vision is to enable anyone to build the best payroll product for their end customers - powering payroll for small and medium businesses across a variety of industries, from vertical SaaS to fintech and neobanks
- Identify high-leverage opportunities to improve developer experience across our APIs, tooling, documentation, and workflows
- Partner closely with internal product, solution architect, and engineering teams to define solutions for reducing friction when integrating with Embedded Payroll
- Engage directly with external developers to understand pain points, validate solutions, and contribute to platform direction
- Design and evolve APIs, abstractions, and interfaces with a focus on clarity, consistency, and long-term maintainability
- Build and maintain developer-facing tools, libraries, and internal frameworks that improve velocity and reliability
- Lead by example through hands-on development, shipping clean, tested, and well-designed code
- Set and promote best practices for reliability, observability, and backwards compatibility in developer-facing systems
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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