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Salary: USD 223,000 - 278,000 / annual
Gusto is a mission-driven platform serving 500,000+ small businesses by handling payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR. The company is undergoing a major transformation to reimagine its product as a proactive AI teammate that automates work for small business owners.
As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Growth Onboarding team, you will own the critical experience that converts new signups into activated, thriving customers. This is a 0-to-1 role focused on eliminating friction from the onboarding journey and meeting customers across multiple channels: web, SMS, WhatsApp, and third-party AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude. You'll work full-stack and cross-functionally as both a product builder and founder.
The Growth Onboarding team is outcome-driven, measured by activation metrics rather than features shipped. The team moves fast, ships prototypes over documentation, and partners tightly with Product, Design, Data, and other engineering teams. You won't receive a pre-built roadmap—you'll help invent it, turning a bold AI product vision into entirely new entry points and experiences.
Day-to-day responsibilities include:
- Owning meaningful slices of the signup-to-activation experience end-to-end, from data model to UI, shipping measurable improvements to customer onboarding speed and reliability
- Inventing and prototyping net-new, 0-to-1 experiences by bringing your own ideas for how AI can reimagine onboarding, not just implementing handed-down specs
- Partnering directly with Product, Design, and Data to frame problems, form hypotheses, and validate them with real customers in weeks rather than quarters
- Identifying where AI meaningfully removes customer effort (and where a simple form is better) and building those experiences thoughtfully into the flow
- Designing onboarding as modular, reusable building blocks so new entry points can be added quickly without rebuilding the foundation
- Raising the engineering bar through pragmatic technical direction, high-quality code, strong code reviews, and mentoring engineers around you
- Making sharp scoping calls under time constraints—shipping the simplest version that proves or disproves an idea, then iterating
Gusto values AI fluency and expects all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role. The company offers competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) to all full-time employees. Hybrid employees in San Francisco are expected to work from the office approximately 2-3 days per week.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including building and shipping customer-facing products at scale
- Product-minded engineer who starts from customer problems and metrics that matter, capable of operating independently across product, design, and data partners
- Demonstrated ability to move fast and execute with high quality: shipping, measuring, and iterating rather than waiting for perfect certainty
- Experience applying AI/LLM capabilities to real product problems with judgment about where it adds value versus noise; habit of using AI tools to work more effectively
- Founder mindset: high ownership, comfort with ambiguity and greenfield problems, bias toward action and outcomes over output
- Track record of raising the bar for teams through technical leadership, mentorship, and setting standards others follow
- Strong full-stack fundamentals and versatility to work wherever the problem is (front end, back end, data)
