Staff Software Engineer

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.

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.

We’re looking for a full-stack software engineer to join the Benefits Renewals team! Each year, customers need to review and update their benefits. This team powers the workflows that guide employers and employees through the renewal process, helping them stay compliant and retain the coverage that works best for them.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you’ll operate across the full product lifecycle: shaping features from early spec and design through to launch and long-term iteration. That means writing clean frontend code, designing and building reliable backend APIs, influencing product direction, and taking ownership of what happens after a feature ships.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Design, build, and test products in Benefits.
• Improve the user experience when renewing benefits, for both our external and internal customers.
• Automate the complex manual processes in health insurance to reduce errors and save time.
• 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 Management, Data, Design, and Platform Engineering teams to understand customer pain points, come up with solutions, and then prototype, iterate, and launch daily.
• Build products that our customers genuinely love.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Successful applicants typically have 8+ years of software development experience.
• Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and make measurable customer impact at scale.
• Experience driving large, cross-functional projects end-to-end through ambiguity — scoping, sequencing, and unblocking without needing the problem pre-broken-down; aligning multiple stakeholders and working with multiple teams.
• Experience with implementing A/B tests or experimentation.
• Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver new product capabilities.
• Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks, applying and sharing best practices to evaluate and scale AI use safely across teams.
• 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 travel to Gusto’s office for onboarding is required for this position.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $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).

Reliable, consistent presence: We expect regular and predictable attendance, whether you’re working in-office, hybrid, or fully remote, so that you stay closely connected to your team, customers, and stakeholders in real time and ensure colleagues and customers receive the timely support and responsiveness they deserve.

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.