Sr. Staff Software Engineer, Pay Group Engineering

Sr. Staff Software Engineer, Pay Group Engineering Join the Sr. Staff Software Engineer role at Gusto. About Gusto At Gusto, we’re on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff—like payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR—so owners can focus on their craft and customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we’re proud to support more than 400,000 small businesses across the country and are building a workplace that represents and celebrates the customers 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 system. As a senior engineer at this level, you guide projects end‑to‑end, influence initial feature specs, take existing systems closer to desired end states, execute on projects, and maintain code that powers core experiences. About the Team Payroll is the beating heart of Gusto’s business. The Pay Group teams are responsible for product, ops, and service components used to onboard customers, process payrolls, calculate taxes & deductions, pay and file with tax agencies, and maintain compliance. 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 Contractors + EOR: The Contractors + EOR team builds the best platform for businesses to hire, pay, and manage their entire workforce—whether they’re contractors, employees, or international teammates. We make contractor payments fast, reliable, and compliant, while simplifying workflows for employers with powerful tools like automated payments, reimbursements, and bulk onboarding. Beyond payments, we’re creating seamless experiences for international employees through payroll, onboarding, and compliance solutions that scale across borders. Payroll: The payroll team is the core of Gusto’s business, ensuring employees are paid accurately, on time, and in compliance with complex regulations. Our teams design and maintain the infrastructure and customer experiences that make payroll simple and reliable. Tax: The Tax team ensures Gusto customers remain compliant by managing every aspect of payroll taxes—setup, calculation, payments, filings, and year‑end communications. We design seamless, end‑to‑end experiences that simplify complex processes. Time: The Time team builds trusted, intuitive tools that make it easy for businesses to schedule, track, and manage their teams. From scheduling shifts and managing availability to tracking hours and time off, we deliver smart, compliant solutions. Day‑to‑Day Responsibilities 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. Build the software platform that powers multiple first‑ and third‑party products and serves millions of businesses. Mentor and grow fellow engineers working to create holistic and scalable solutions. Drive the product development process from concept to launch, delivering delightful products. Improve the productivity and happiness of our teams with the services, tools, and APIs you build. Engage in a supportive environment working with others to drive productivity and innovation. Own and drive the technical strategy and roadmap for your domain in alignment with team and group OKRs. Identify and prioritize long‑term investments to improve foundational systems and architecture. Lead improvements to incident response processes, tooling, and culture to enhance system reliability and team effectiveness. What We’re Looking For At least 12+ years of experience. Experience designing and developing robust, distributed systems using multiple general‑purpose programming languages. Experience influencing and guiding the work of multiple teams on scaling, refactoring, and optimizing legacy products. Experience architecting, building, and testing large‑scale production‑level code. An aptitude for simplifying complex and ambiguous problems. Strong communication skills for conveying technical complexity and facilitating trade‑offs. Enthusiasm for a collaborative, test‑driven environment. Ability to produce maintainable, structured, well‑documented code. Experience building fault‑tolerant, mission‑critical software. Experience building products in highly regulated domains (desired, but not required). Preferred experience in Payroll, Taxes, or Compliance. Experience creating prompt libraries for common patterns. Mentor engineers on effective AI usage and help develop an AI strategy for other engineers. Familiar with current AI tools (LLMs, Cursor, Copilot, Agents) and their benefits/successes. Bonus: Experience with Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, and React. Please note that travel to Gusto’s Denver office for onboarding is required for this position. If you have any questions regarding this requirement, please share with your recruiter. Compensation Our cash compensation range for this role is $189,000/yr to $236,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $223,000/yr to $278,000/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 Expectations Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees 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 expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto’s subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale. When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required for hybrid days. Equal Opportunity Employer Gusto is a proud 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. 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. Seniority Level Mid‑Senior level Employment Type Full‑time Job Function Engineering and Information Technology, Software Development #J-18808-Ljbffr