Principal Software Engineer - Pay Group Engineering

Principal Software Engineer - Pay Group Engineering Denver, CO; San Francisco, CA; New York, NY 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 400,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve. About the Role We’re hiring seasoned engineers to join our teams that work on core platform capabilities, improving our existing systems for extensibility and scalability, and building the future of Gusto's Payroll and Tax systems. As a Gusto Software Engineer at this level, you’ll be guiding projects end-to-end by influencing initial feature specs, understanding how to take existing systems closer to desired end states, executing on projects, and maintaining code that powers core experiences. If you’re interested in building elegant software with far-reaching effects in our modern economy, join us! About the Team Payroll is the beating heart of Gusto’s business. Pay Group (payroll and tax) teams are responsible for the product, ops, and service components Gusto uses to onboard customers, process payrolls, calculate taxes and deductions, pay and file with tax agencies, and maintain compliance on behalf of the customers. The domain is highly complex and offers the opportunity to engage in system design that simplifies this for customers, both internal and external. Sub-Teams Tax Accuracy: The Tax Accuracy group is responsible for gathering and maintaining the necessary information to pay and file taxes accurately and on time for our customers. It consists of multiple teams that cover various parts of the process. Ledger: This team is building a payroll ledger to track accrual accounting for payroll-related money movement. This team is starting to support the payroll domain, risk, payments, and accounting. Engine: This team works closely with the payroll compliance team to ensure enablement of compliant pay, such as minimum wage adjustments, regular rate of pay, etc. We enable end-to-end success of payroll processing and working with various domain teams such as tax calculations, tax setup, payments, and more. Platform: This team is developing a new platform to be the common interface for interacting with payroll and tax data. The payroll and tax domain is highly complex; our team exists to make it easier for other application teams to interact with the payroll and tax system. We enable application and experience teams to deliver customer value faster by providing a scalable, flexible, performant, and highly understandable platform to integrate with. Day-to-Day Responsibilities Function as a Technical Lead: Across multiple teams in Payroll Services, helping keep engineers unblocked and deliver high-quality work. Design, build, and test: The foundation that supports compliant payroll for millions of people. Help scale: One of the largest Ruby/Rails and TypeScript/React applications in the world. Collaborate on complex and ambiguous problems with cross-functional partners. Mentor and grow fellow engineers to create holistic and scalable solutions. Lead the product development process from concept to launch. Improve the productivity and happiness of our teams through services, tools, and APIs. Engage in a supportive environment driving productivity and innovation. Stay up-to-date with advancements in AI and Machine Learning, applying this knowledge to projects. Qualifications At least 15 years of experience in relevant fields. Capable of building maintainable, structured, well-documented code. Strong knowledge of data structures, data modeling, and system design. Experience working across 3+ teams, influencing product and team direction. Experience on platform products that are utilized throughout the company. Experience engineering, designing, building, and supporting large‑scale systems in production. Ability to bring clarity and simplicity to complex problems, communicating technical complexity and facilitating tradeoffs. Experience operationalizing and scaling large interconnected production systems. Experience in complex, highly regulated domains such as HR, Payroll, Taxes, or Compliance. Experience using AI tools to build, test, and iterate on products quickly. Understanding of evaluating AI-driven outputs using clear success criteria. Commitment to staying current on emerging backend technologies, AI frameworks, and patterns. Willingness to contribute to shared tools or templates that enhance AI experimentation speed and safety. Compensation Our cash compensation for this role is targeted at $215,000/yr to $252,000/yr in Denver and most remote locations, and $251,000/yr to $295,000/yr for San Francisco, Seattle & 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. Work Location Employees based in Denver, San Francisco, or New York City are expected to work from the office 2–3 days per week on designated days. Similar expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, located in Scottsdale. Company Values 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. Equal Opportunity 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, 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. #J-18808-Ljbffr