Principal Product Manager, Gusto
Reporting
$210-263k
+ RSUs
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
$210-263k
+ RSUs
2-3 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To grow the small business economy.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of hands-on product management experience
- At least some of that time spent on data products, analytics tools, reporting platforms, or infrastructure products where internal or external customers were a primary consideration
- Demonstrated track record of shipping customer-facing improvements at pace—things customers notice and use
- Experience with AI-powered product features or data experiences: building them, scoping them, evaluating them, or working closely enough on them that you understand the operational reality
- Strong cross-functional collaboration skills with engineering, design, and data partners
- Experience in environments where back-end platform maturity and front-end customer experience have to be balanced and advanced simultaneously
- Customer obsession. You understand how small businesses use data to make decisions—questions they're actually trying to answer
- You stay close to customers through direct research and indirect feedback loops (CX, support tickets, usage data), and you use what you learn to sharpen your priorities constantly
- Real AI fluency. You use AI tools in your own daily work for synthesis, ideation, analysis and prototyping ideas
- You've built AI-powered product features or worked closely enough on them that you understand what good looks
- You have a genuine point of view on what AI-native reporting means and where it's going
- Bias toward shipping. The Reporting team has strong foundations and the job now is to deliver. You set short, clear milestones
- You move fast on near-term customer improvements while keeping the longer-term vision clear
- You use staged rollouts and learning plans as a matter of course
- You don't let platform work crowd out customer-facing progress because you hold both at once, and you know when to push and when to sequence
- Technical fluency in data. You're comfortable in conversations about data infrastructure: pipelines, data models, APIs, trade-offs between migration approaches
- You don't need to write the SQL, but you understand what the engineers are building and why it matters for customers
- You've worked on data products where back-end complexity is real and the front-end has to make it feel simple
- Cross-functional partnership. Reporting sits at the intersection of almost every team at Gusto because App teams depend on our platform to surface data to their customers
- You treat partner teams as one of your most important customer groups—you understand their needs, you give them a clear path forward, and you make it easy to build on what you've created
- Clear, direct communication. You can tell a simple, compelling story about a complex system. You give stakeholders honest, specific progress updates
- You escalate when something is off track and you come with a plan. You make it easy for people at any level to understand where Reporting is going and why it matters
- Strategic clarity. You hold the near-term and long-term at the same time without letting one crowd out the other
- You build a multi-year vision that connects to Gusto's AI transformation, and you sequence the work so that every cycle delivers meaningful customer value on the path to that vision
- You know when to go narrow and when to open up scope, and you make that call quickly
- If you don't think you meet all of the criteria above but still are interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box, and we're looking for someone excited to join the team
What the job involves
- We’re looking for high-autonomy, entrepreneurial Product Managers to come build high-impact solutions for small businesses and their employees
- We believe in high-ownership Product Managers who operate like business owners - owning an entire roadmap end to end, and shaping the product from strategy setting through the nitty gritty execution details
- Our Product team is lean, which means you’ll have a high degree of impact and ownership
- We’re here to serve small and medium businesses. Gusto has a strong mission-driven culture, and we care deeply about lifting up these business owners
- The Reporting team sits within the Core Experience organization and owns one of the most important experiences in the product: giving small business owners clear visibility into data about their payroll, benefits, and spend
- We're at an inflection point
- The back-end infrastructure that makes AI-native reporting possible is taking shape and our next chapter is delivering those capabilities to customers in ways that are genuinely useful: fixing the basics, enabling AI-powered answers, and building a reporting experience that meets customers where they are. This PM will drive that work
- Drive the strategy and roadmap end-to-end. In close collaboration with your key partners in engineering, design and data, you'll set the strategic direction for Reporting and own the roadmap across all surfaces (web, mobile, and embedded experiences)
- Define the vision. You'll anchor the team and stakeholders around a clear, compelling vision for how traditional reports and AI-driven answers work together over time—one that connects to Gusto's broader AI transformation and gives everyone a coherent picture of where we're going
- Ship customer-facing value every cycle. You'll hold yourself and the team accountable for delivering real improvements that customers notice and use, balancing fixing the basics and with bigger, future swings
- Partner with other product teams on real use cases. You'll work hand-in-hand with app teams like Pay and Benefits to deliver reporting capabilities end-to-end through real customer journeys, proving the infrastructure works and surfacing what needs to get better
- Drive the data infrastructure forward. You'll bring rigor and clear prioritization to the ongoing data migration work, making sure back-end progress translates into customer-facing capability on a timeline that matters
- Set up and track the right metrics. You'll define leading indicators for reporting quality and customer satisfaction, use data to drive continuous improvement, and communicate progress honestly to stakeholders
- Raise the bar on collaboration. You'll work closely with engineering, design, and data partners to build a team that operates with speed and quality. You'll treat partner product teams as customers, giving them a clear path forward, answering their questions, and making it easy for them to build on what you've created
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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