Staff Software Engineer, Core Platforms

Staff Software Engineer, Core Platforms

San Francisco, CA - Hybrid; Denver, CO - Hybrid; New York, NY - Hybrid

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve.

All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.

About the Role:

We're looking for seasoned full-stack software engineers to join the teams behind Gusto's product platforms — the shared systems that our product teams build upon — to serve small business owners every day.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll operate across the full lifecycle of foundational systems: shaping architecture early in the design process, building self-service internal features and APIs, and owning their performance long after launch. That means engineering the core business engine, enabling product teams with reliable backend services, and setting the engineering standard for those around you.

If you're drawn to work that combines technical craft with real-world impact — helping power the livelihoods of millions using Gusto products — join us!

Here's what you'll do day-to-day:

• Design, build, and test Gusto core platform services – communications, reporting, dashboards, access, workflows, risk, payments, and compliance capabilities, among others
• Mentor other engineers to help solve some of the hardest technical problems out there in very complex domains and at a large scale
• Help scale one of the largest Ruby/Rails and Javascript/React applications in the world
• Collaborate with our Product Engineering, Product Management, Data, and Design teams to understand customer pain points, come up with solutions, and then prototype, iterate, and launch daily
• Build platforms that engineering teams rely on, and trust to deliver products that our customers genuinely love

Here's what we're looking for:

• Successful applicants typically have 8+ years of software development experience
• Passion for creating scalable, efficient platforms for users
• Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver new platform capabilities
• Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks, applying and sharing best practices to evaluate and scale AI use safely across teams
• Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and make measurable user impact at scale
• Experience with large scale refactors, performance and reliability issues, and a strong sense of ownership over all aspects of your platform area
• Ability to mentor engineers to maximize their performance and impact

Others:

• Experience in, or interest working in, Ruby on Rails
• Appreciation for a collaborative, test-driven environment
• Ability to build well-structured, maintainable, well-documented code
• Ability to effectively communicate across engineering teams and with business stakeholders

Please note that a two day travel to a Gusto office for onboarding is required for this position. If you have any questions regarding this requirement, please share with your recruiter.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $163,000–$204,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $197,000–$247,000 for San Francisco & New York. Stock equity is additional. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.