Sr. Staff Software Engineer, Pay Group Engineering (San Francisco)

Position Overview

Join the Sr. Staff Software Engineer role at Gusto, a company on a mission to grow the small business economy by handling payroll, benefits, HR, and more. In this role you will guide projects from concept to launch, build robust systems for payroll compliance, and influence the technical strategy within our core Pay Group Engineering team.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and test the foundation that supports compliant payroll for millions of people.
• Scale and maintain large Ruby/Rails and TypeScript/React applications while collaborating with cross-functional teams.
• Mentor and guide fellow engineers, owning the technical strategy and roadmap for your domain.
• Drive the entire product development process from initial specifications through launch.
• Improve tools, services, and incident response processes to enhance system reliability and team effectiveness.

Required Qualifications

• At least 12+ years of experience in software engineering.
• Proven expertise in designing robust, distributed systems using multiple programming languages.
• Experience influencing team efforts to scale, refactor, and optimize legacy systems.
• Strong background in architecting, building, and testing large-scale production code.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to simplify complex, ambiguous challenges.
• Experience with fault-tolerant, mission-critical software development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in Payroll, Taxes, or Compliance is a plus.
• Proficiency in creating prompt libraries for common patterns.
• Experience mentoring engineers in effective AI usage and developing AI strategies, with familiarity using tools like LLMs, Copilot, and Agents.
• Bonus: Experience with Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, and React.

Benefits & Perks

• Compensation: $189,000/yr to $236,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations; $223,000/yr to $278,000/yr in San Francisco, Seattle & New York, plus stock equity.
• Onboarding requires travel to the Denver office.
• Hybrid work model with physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City, along with high-standard remote connectivity requirements.
• Gusto is a proud equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion, offering reasonable accommodations throughout the candidate journey.