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Salary: USD 163,000 - 247,000 / annual
Gusto is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to own and build the core systems that move money and assets through Gusto Retirement. This is a hands-on role focused on backend services and APIs, shipping production code, and working through real financial edge cases. You'll partner closely with product, compliance, and operations to translate complex financial requirements into reliable software.
The Financial Infrastructure team owns the core money and asset flow systems for Gusto Retirement, working on payments, settlements, tax and compliance integrations, and related systems. The team is senior-level, focused, and maintains tight ownership of what it builds.
Day-to-day responsibilities include:
- Design, build, and ship services and APIs for money movement and financial integrations
- Work on payments, settlements, reconciliation, and corrections involving real customer funds
- Build and support critical workflows including payroll integration, KYB/KYC, 401k loans, billing and invoicing, and IRA systems
- Partner with product, compliance, and operations to scope work and deliver production-ready solutions
- Debug production issues and improve reliability, observability, and operational tooling
- Collaborate with other engineering teams to integrate with shared systems and platforms
- Mentor other engineers on solving complex technical problems at scale
- Write clear, reliable, well-tested code that ships quickly and scales well
Gusto supports over 500,000 small businesses nationwide with payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR services. All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs). The company has physical offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York; hybrid employees in those locations are expected to work from the office 2-3 days per week. Travel to a Gusto office for onboarding is required.
AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto, and all team members are expected to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years of software engineering experience building and shipping production products or platforms
- Strong experience with services, APIs, and data-heavy workflows
- Experience working on financial systems, payments, or other high-correctness domains (or ability to ramp quickly)
- Comfortable owning systems end-to-end, including production support and operational work
- Experience working closely with product managers and cross-functional partners to deliver scoped work
- Pragmatic, execution-focused approach to engineering
- Clear communicator and collaborative teammate
- Ability to mentor engineers to maximize their performance and impact
- Experience with Ruby on Rails or comparable backend framework
BONUS:
- Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver new product capabilities
- Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks, with ability to apply and share best practices
