Staff Software Engineer, Retirement Money Planning

About Gusto

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

You’ll be a key full-stack engineer focused on building and owning the systems that empower over a million savers (including entrepreneurs) to save for their retirement via 401(k)s, IRAs, and more. This is a very hands‑on role: owning backend services and APIs end‑to‑end, building the interfaces savers use to manage their accounts, and working through real financial edge cases. You’ll partner closely with Product, Design, Compliance, and Operations to turn complex financial requirements into reliable software. If you like solving hard problems and having a real impact on people’s lives, then we want to work with you.

About the Team

The Money Planning team owns the user experience for employees, savers, and entrepreneurs to manage their retirement and savings. We build features and capabilities for savers to manage their contributions, portfolios, and withdrawals. What we do matters. People are trusting us with their retirement, and that's something we never lose sight of.

Here’s what you’ll do day‑to‑day

• Design, build, and test the experience that enables savers to manage their 401(k)s, IRAs, and more
• Contribute to the architecture of existing systems to support new capabilities
• Apply AI tools as a regular part of your engineering workflow, and bring an AI-native lens to product decisions: identify where AI can reduce saver effort, simplify complex retirement decisions, and surface proactive guidance before savers know they need it
• Advocate for the needs of our savers and entrepreneurs who rely on Gusto to help them save for retirement correctly and confidently
• Collaborate on complex and ambiguous problems with partners across Engineering, Product Management, Design, Compliance, Operations, and other cross-functional teams
• Engage in a highly supportive environment working with others to drive productivity and innovation
• Debug production issues and improve reliability, observability, and operational tooling
• Identify and prioritize long‑term investments to improve foundational systems and architecture
• Write clear, reliable, well‑tested code that ships quickly and scales well

Here’s what we’re looking for

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building and shipping production products or platforms
• Strong experience working across teams and gaining influence to drive projects forward
• Strong experience with services and APIs
• Strong experience with message‑based systems (Sidekiq, Kafka, etc.)
• Experience with Ruby on Rails a must have
• Strong experience with large modern frontend applications (like React)
• Experience with GraphQL
• Comfortable owning systems end‑to‑end, including production support and operational work
• Experience working closely with PMs and cross‑functional partners to deliver scoped work
• Pragmatic, execution‑focused approach to engineering
• Comfortable working with and influencing other teams to maximize impact
• Clear communicator and collaborative teammate

Please note that travel to Gusto's 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, 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 has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale. Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas. When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.

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 proce