About Gusto
At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. 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.
All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.
AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.
About the Role:
Do you relish in the challenge to take complex and ambiguous problems and distill them into actionable solutions? Are you obsessed with creating simple, beautiful, and enjoyable experiences that delight users and make their lives easier? Are you someone with a strong bias for action, who can drive complex and highly visible projects and garner support and buy-in across all levels and cross-functional teams? Do you work at the intersection of product excellence, customer empathy, business strategy, and artificial intelligence? If so, you may be a great fit for the Staff Engineer, Tax Credits position.
About the Team:
Tax Credits is an emerging app in the Gusto platform, and is tasked to create a magical experience that is helping as many Gustomers as possible to take advantage of available Tax Credits and grants in a scalable, approachable and opinionated way. Our goal is to empower and delight our Gustomers.
- Providing “magical just-in-time moments” that introduce potential Tax Credits to the right people at the right time
- Create a system of self-serve that lets ERs explore their Tax Credits potential and easily go through the complex process of gathering all the data and deliver the right studies
- Deliver a simplified and streamlined tax credit discovery journey and the user experience to support it
Due to the horizontal nature of this team, you will work cross-functionally to ensure your solutions solve the problems of our varied customer base, as well as address needs of our many product teams and key business goals. This team has strong executive support and exciting plans to grow in size and scope.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
- Design, build, and test Gusto core products
- Mentor other engineers to help solve some of the hardest technical problems out there in very complex domains and at a large scale
- Help scale one of the largest Ruby/Rails and Javascript/React applications in the world
- Collaborate with our Product Management, Data, Design, and Platform Engineering teams to understand customer pain points, come up with solutions, and then prototype, iterate, and launch daily
- Build products that our customers genuinely love
Here’s what we’re looking for:
- Successful applicants typically have 8+ years of software development experience
- Experience building scalable solutions that eliminate customer pain; passion for creating memorable experiences for customers
- Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver new product capabilities
- Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks, applying and sharing best practices to evaluate and scale AI use safely across teams
- Experience owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and make measurable customer impact at scale
- Experience with large scale refactors, performance and reliability issues, and a strong sense of ownership over all aspects of your product area
- Ability to mentor engineers to maximize their performance and impact
Others:
- Experience in, or interest working in, Ruby on Rails
- Appreciation for a collaborative, test-driven environment
- Ability to build well-structured, maintainable, well-documented code
- Ability to effectively communicate across engineering teams and with business stakeholders
Please note that a two day travel to a Gusto office for onboarding is required for this position. If you have any questions regarding this requirement, please share with your recruiter.
Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $163,000–$204,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $197,000–$247,000 for San Francisco & New York. Stock equity is additional. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.
Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale.
Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas.
When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.
Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.
Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.
Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.
Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.
Skills Required
- 8+ years of software development experience
- Experience building scalable solutions that eliminate customer pain
- Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver product capabilities
- Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks, including safely evaluating and scaling AI use
- Experience owning multi-quarter projects solving complex engineering problems with measurable customer impact at scale
- Experience with large-scale refactors, performance issues, and reliability issues
- Strong ownership over all aspects of a product area
- Ability to mentor engineers and maximize their performance and impact
- Experience in, or interest in working with, Ruby on Rails
- Ability to build well-structured, maintainable, well-documented code
- Ability to communicate effectively across engineering teams and with business stakeholders
- Appreciation for a collaborative, test-driven environment
What the Team is Saying
What We Do
Gusto is a modern, online small business platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of full-service payroll, Gusto offers health insurance, 401(k)s, expert HR, and team management tools. Today, Gusto offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York serve more than 400,000 businesses. Our customers come from all walks of life, and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.
Why Work With Us
We help small businesses—the backbone of the economy—thrive. Everything we do ladders up to empowering entrepreneurs and supporting their teams. Gusto empowers builders at every level to take initiative and make things better. You'll be solving meaningful challenges that shape the future of work.
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Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
We’ve built an inclusive, connected culture—no matter where you live. Whether near an office or remote, you’ll find opportunities to connect, grow, and belong. Employees work from the office on 2 designated days per week.
