Principal Software Engineer

Gusto

Gusto

Software Engineering
Denver, CO, USA · San Francisco, CA, USA · New York, NY, USA
Posted on Jan 27, 2024


About Gusto

Gusto is a modern, online people 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 300,000 businesses nationwide.

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That’s why we’re committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

Principal Software Engineer, Growth

We’re looking for a seasoned Engineer to join our teams that work on customer-facing products, developing features and platforms to help define the visitor-to-customer journey at Gusto. Our goal is to help Gusto grow by delivering a consistently great experience across all of our products and services.

We’re looking for talented and motivated engineer to lead and grow projects end-to-end by leading the charge in coming up with a cohesive Growth-wide technical strategy, influencing EPDD leads across Growth, as well as cross-functional partners, to incorporate our technical strategy into team’s roadmap, helping teams iterate towards our platform vision, and helping teams kickoff and execute complex that contribute to the long-term success of Gusto. If you’re interested in solving complex problems and contributing to the overall strategy of growing Gusto, join us!

Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day

  • Define, iterate and execute on technical roadmap for Acquisition and Expansion engines to drive revenue growth.
  • Partner with Growth and cross-functional teams to tackle complex and ambiguous problems, translating them into engineering solutions that drive our Acquisition and Expansion platform forward.
  • Identify areas for process and/or technical improvements, and take the initiative to enhance engineering processes and structures.
  • Mentor and provide guidance to software engineers, fostering their growth and development.
  • Take ownership of projects, ensuring they meet high standards of quality and performance.
  • Collaborate with engineering leads, product managers, designers, and data scientists to understand short- and long-term investment opportunities, and collectively deliver innovative solutions.
  • Collaborate with all Growth teams, not only on innovative projects, but also on long-term maintainability and stability of the systems.
  • Execute in different horizons based on Growth’s overall goals. This means at times, embedding in a team for multiple quarters and help kick off and drive to completion complex initiatives, and at other times jump into initiatives to assist/drive towards alignment and move on to the next area of focus.

Here’s What We’re Looking For

    • 12+ years of hands-on experience, with recent 3 at high level and wide scope of impact on technical leadership.
    • 3+ years of experience building an Acquisition engine to drive lead/prospect and customer counts.
    • 3+ years of experience leading and executing initiatives that leverage ML to drive ACV expansion.
    • Deep understanding and experience defining technical architectures for driving revenue growth.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $144,000/yr to $231,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $174,000/yr to $272,000/yr 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.


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. If you require assistance in filling out a Gusto job application, please reach out to candidate-accommodations@gusto.com.