Gusto · 1 hour ago
Staff Software Engineer, Embedded Payroll , Developer Experience
San Francisco Bay Area
Full-time
Hybrid
Lead/Staff
$200K/yr - $270K/yr
8+ years expGusto is on a mission to grow the small business economy by handling payroll, health insurance, and HR services. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer focused on Developer Experience for the Embedded Payroll team to improve how developers build on Gusto's payroll platform by enhancing APIs, tooling, and workflows.
Bookkeeping and PayrollEmployee BenefitsEnterprise SoftwareFinancial ServicesFinTechHuman ResourcesSaaSSoftware
Responsibilities
Identify high-leverage opportunities to improve developer experience across our APIs, tooling, documentation, and workflows
Partner closely with internal product, solution architect, and engineering teams to define solutions for reducing friction when integrating with Embedded Payroll
Engage directly with external developers to understand pain points, validate solutions, and contribute to platform direction
Design and evolve APIs, abstractions, and interfaces with a focus on clarity, consistency, and long-term maintainability
Build and maintain developer-facing tools, libraries, and internal frameworks that improve velocity and reliability
Lead by example through hands-on development, shipping clean, tested, and well-designed code
Set and promote best practices for reliability, observability, and backwards compatibility in developer-facing systems
Qualification
Required
8+ years of professional software development experience with demonstrated technical leadership within your team and organization
Strong backend engineering expertise, with deep experience working in large, production systems
You've designed APIs, platforms, or tools with developers as your primary customer
You've spent time mentoring engineers on your team and within the Embedded Payroll organization
You think in terms of business priorities and know how to orient your team around the right technical goals for the business
Experience applying AI tools (LLMs, Cursor, Copilot, Agents) to accelerate development, improve code quality, and deliver scalable developer-facing systems
Preferred
Ruby on Rails experience is a plus
Familiar with how AI tools can improve developer productivity and willing to mentor others on effective AI usage
Benefits
Health insurance
401(k)s
Company
Gusto
Gusto is an HR and payroll platform that simplifies complex tasks, empowering businesses to focus on what matters most.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Gusto has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (49)
2024 (54)
2023 (19)
2022 (37)
2021 (24)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$746.1MKey Investors
Friends & Family CapitalT. Rowe PriceAkkadian Ventures
2023-01-28Series Unknown
2022-05-12Series E· $55M
2021-08-10Series E· $175M
Leadership Team
Josh Reeves
Head of Gusto (CEO) and Co-Founder. Building Gusto for the Long Term.
Edward Kim
Co-founder and Head of Technology
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