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Salary: USD 197,000 - 247,000 / annual
Gusto is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical development of Gusto Solo, an all-in-one platform for solopreneurs and their accountants. You'll own end-to-end delivery of new product areas, from technical design through shipping, working in a small, high-performing team with direct impact on top-line revenue.
Day-to-day responsibilities include:
- Own end-to-end delivery of net-new product areas, from technical design through shipping
- Use AI as a genuine multiplier in your own workflow and help build AI-native experiences into the product (including MCP tools)
- Partner closely with Product, Design, Data Science, and GTM to identify customer and business problems, prototype solutions, and iterate quickly
- Make pragmatic architecture and data-modeling decisions for problems without existing precedent at Gusto
- Build and maintain full-stack features from backend APIs to frontend UI with an eye toward scalability and maintainability
- Weigh in beyond the "engineer lane" on product framing, design tradeoffs, and GTM considerations
- Help define engineering practices and technical foundations for an early-stage team
Gusto Solo is a fully funded, high-performing team consisting of a small group of engineers, an Engineering Manager, a dedicated Data Scientist, Designer, and GTM partner. The role offers real opportunity to influence product, design, and go-to-market strategy. You'll work in a scrappy, fast-moving environment where you wear many hats and operate with high autonomy.
Note: A two-day travel to a Gusto office for onboarding is required. Hybrid employees in San Francisco are expected to work from the office approximately 2-3 days per week.
Requirements:
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with a track record of shipping full-stack features end to end
- Proficiency across a full-stack toolkit (e.g., Ruby on Rails, React, TypeScript, GraphQL) and judgment to choose the right tool for the problem
- Demonstrated ownership of 0→1 or greenfield projects, not just extension of existing systems
- Self-driven mindset: comfortable setting direction amid ambiguity, not just executing against a spec
- Genuine, habitual use of AI tools in day-to-day engineering work
- Excellent written and verbal communication with a track record of strong cross-functional partnership
Bonus qualifications:
- Experience building for self-employed businesses or SMBs
- Experience in regulated or compliance-adjacent domains (fintech, payroll, tax, accounting)
- Experience shipping AI-powered or AI-augmented product experiences (agents, copilots, LLM-based tooling)
- Startup or "team of one" experience, comfortable operating with high autonomy and few guardrails
