Recruiting Operations and Transformation Lead

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

We're looking for a strategic and execution-oriented Lead, Recruiting Process Transformation to lead the evolution of our recruiting ecosystem. This leader will identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, and automate Recruiting processes while ensuring operational excellence across our Recruiting Operations and Candidate Experience teams.

Reporting into the People Operations, Services & Technology (POST) organization, this role sits at the intersection of strategy, technology, and operations. You'll partner across Recruiting, People Tech, Legal, and business leaders to redesign how hiring gets done — from requisition to offer to onboarding handoff — creating scalable experiences for candidates, hiring teams, and Recruiting partners.

In addition to leading enterprise process transformation initiatives for recruiting, you'll oversee the teams responsible for executing our core Recruiting workflows, including Recruiting Operations and Candidate Experience.

What You'll Do

Lead Recruiting Process Transformation

• Develop and execute a multi-year strategy for transforming recruiting processes.
• Analyze end-to-end candidate and hiring lifecycle workflows; from requisition intake through offer and onboarding handoff; to identify friction, inefficiencies, redundancies, and opportunities for simplification.
• Redesign processes using Lean, service design, and automation principles.
• Consult with technical partners to understand how tooling, AI, and agentic solutions (e.g., InviteOS) can support improved recruiting efficiency.
• Build business cases that quantify operational impact, candidate/hiring team experience improvements, and ROI.
• Prioritize transformation initiatives based on organizational impact, scalability, and strategic objectives.
• Partner with Recruiting leadership to define, track, and report on recruiting metrics
• Diagnose root causes behind unmet KPIs and drive them to resolution, launching transformation initiatives where applicable.

Drive Technology-Enabled Improvements

• Partner closely with People Technology to implement technology solutions that improve recruiting operational efficiency, including AI-native recruiting platforms such as InviteOS, our custom recruiting tool.
• Evaluate opportunities to leverage workflow automation, AI, integrations, self-service capabilities, and system enhancements (Greenhouse, sourcing tools, scheduling tools) to drive prioritization for recruiting technology.
• Ensure process design and technology decisions work together to create sustainable solutions.
• Balance configuration, workflow redesign, and policy changes to achieve desired outcomes.

Lead Operational Excellence

Provide leadership for:

Recruiter Operations

• Own transformation of core recruiting workflows, requisition management, and interview/offer processing.
• Ensure operational accuracy, compliance, and service level achievement across the hiring pipeline.
• Continuously improve throughput, quality, and controls across sourcing-to-offer stages.

Candidate Experience

• Lead the team responsible for candidate-facing support and experience across the hiring journey.
• Partner with People Tech to evaluate and deploy modern technology solutions or replace current solutions where needed.
• Improve service delivery through knowledge management, self-service, case management optimization, and interview/scheduling process improvements.
• Develop candidate experience metrics and continuously improve satisfaction and time-to-fill outcomes.

Establish Operational Governance

• Define operational standards, process ownership, documentation, and governance across Recruiting operations.
• Create KPI dashboards measuring efficiency, quality, service levels, cycle times, automation adoption, and candidate experience.
• Build mechanisms to continuously identify improvement opportunities through operational data (e.g., Greenhouse reporting, PHC-style ticket analysis) and candidate/hiring manager feedback.

Lead and Develop Teams

• Lead and coach managers and individual contributors across Recruiting Operations and Candidate Experience.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, operational excellence, and candidate-centric thinking.
• Build organizational capability in process improvement methodologies and change management.

Partner Across the Business

• Influence senior stakeholders across Recruiting leadership, People Tech, Finance, IT, Security, and Legal.
• Translate business hiring priorities into operational improvements.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives requiring alignment across multiple organizations.

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in Recruiting Operations, Talent Acquisition Operations, Business Operations, Process Excellence, Consulting, or related fields.
• 5+ years leading managers and operational teams.
• Demonstrated success leading enterprise-scale process transformation initiatives.
• Experience managing recruiting operations, candidate experience/support, or similar service organizations.
• Strong understanding of recruiting technology ecosystems (Greenhouse or comparable ATS, sourcing tools, scheduling/case management platforms).
• Experience applying Lean, Six Sigma, business process management, or operational excellence methodologies.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to use operational metrics (time-to-fill, pipeline conversion, candidate satisfaction) to drive decisions.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders without direct authority.
• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in high-growth technology companies.
• Experience implementing recruiting technology or enterprise workflow platforms.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled recruiting automation and candidate support technologies.
• Lean Six Sigma certification or equivalent operational excellence training.
• Experience leading organizational change and large cross-functional programs.

Success in This Role

Within your first year, you will have:

• Established a transformation roadmap for Recruiting operations.
• Identified and delivered measurable improvements in key candidate and hiring lifecycle processes.
• Reduced manual work through workflow redesign and automation.
• Improved candidate experience effectiveness and satisfaction.
• Increased operational visibility through standardized metrics and dashboards.
• Built a culture where continuous improvement becomes part of day-to-day recruiting operations.

Leadership Competencies

This leader excels at:

• Strategic systems thinking
• Operational excellence
• Candidate obsession
• Data-driven decision making
• Organizational influence
• Change leadership
• Developing high-performing teams
• Balancing innovation with operational rigor

Compensation

Our cash compensation amount for this role is $147,000/yr to $190,000/yr in Denver & most major metro locations, and $173,000/yr to $225,000/yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

This is a HYBRID role where you will be expected onsite Tuesday and Wednesday in either New York, Denver, San Francisco.

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 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.

Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.

Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.