Gusto

Senior Staff Software Engineer, Growth Onboarding

San Francisco, CA · Staff+ · Full-time

Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 15 hours ago

Full-Stack DevelopmentLLMsProduct StrategyRecruitingLeadershipMentoring

About the role

Getting started on Gusto should feel effortless - the path from "I just signed up" to "my business is set up and running on Gusto" is where small business owners need us most, and where the biggest opportunity to grow the business lives.
We're in the middle of the most exciting shift in Gusto's history: reimagining our product as a proactive AI teammate that doesn't just help small businesses, but does the work for them.
We're a full-stack, outcome-driven team measured by activation - not features shipped.

Invent and prototype net-new, 0-to-1 experiences - bringing your own ideas for how AI can reimagine onboarding, not just implementing a spec handed to you.
Identify where AI meaningfully removes customer effort (and where a simple form is better), and build those experiences thoughtfully into the flow.
Design onboarding as modular, reusable building blocks so new entry points into Gusto can be added quickly without rebuilding the foundation.
Most of that opportunity is still ahead of us - which means this role is full of net-new, 0-to-1 problems to invent and build from the ground up.
We move fast, ship prototypes over docs, and partner tightly with Product, Design, Data, and other engineering teams to make onboarding simpler, smarter, and a launchpad for everything a business does next.
A product-minded engineer who starts from the customer problem and the metric that matters, not just the ticket - and who can operate independently across product, design, and data partners.
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.

Experience applying AI/LLM capabilities to real product problems - with the judgment to know where it adds value and where it adds noise - and a habit of using AI tools to work more effectively.

All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success.

We handle the hard stuff - payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR - so owners can focus on their craft and their customers.
All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) - because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success.
Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.
You won't just be handed a roadmap - you'll help invent it, turning a bold AI product vision into new front doors and experiences that have never existed before.

Growth Onboarding owns one of the most consequential moments in a customer's journey: their first experience of Gusto.
If you want your work to move a top-line number and shape the front door to a company serving 500,000+ businesses, this is the team.
Here's what you'll do day-to-day:
Own meaningful slices of the signup-to-activation experience end to end - from data model to UI - and ship measurable improvements to how quickly and reliably new customers get up and running.
Partner directly with Product, Design, and Data to frame problems, form hypotheses, and validate them with real customers in weeks, not quarters.
Raise the engineering bar through pragmatic technical direction, high-quality code, strong reviews, and mentoring engineers around you.
Make sharp scoping calls under a time box - shipping the simplest version that proves or disproves an idea, then iterating.
Here's what we're looking for:

This listing is sourced directly from Gusto's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.