About Gusto

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff—like payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR—so owners can focus on their craft and customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we’re proud to support more than 400,000 small businesses across the country, and we’re building a workplace that represents and celebrates the customers we serve. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

About the Role

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Marketing Technology team, you will drive key architectural improvements to Gusto's MarTech stack as we transition to an AI-native company. This is a full-stack, frontend-leaning role where you will design and build foundational web platform capabilities that enable teams at Gusto to engage with our customers at scale.

Your work will focus on building high-performance, highly reliable web systems from the rendering and delivery layer down to the APIs and data pipelines that feed them. You will architect how our content delivery platform integrates with customer data and personalization infrastructure, designing systems that are observable, testable, and built to last.

You'll operate at the intersection of marketing systems, AI capabilities, and platform evolution. If you are passionate about building highly reliable, frontend-focused systems that can reason, predict, and personalize to unlock Gusto's next phase of sustainable growth, we would love to have you join our team.

About the Team

The Marketing Technology team is building the next generation of infrastructure that powers Gusto's customer acquisition and engagement funnels.

Our mission is to move beyond deterministic user journeys and build intelligent, adaptive growth systems. We are building a world-class technology platform designed to understand customer intent, tailor experiences in real-time, and continuously improve through data and feedback loops. This means building for reliability, observability, and scale.

We prioritize engineering quality and technical rigor because these systems are core to Gusto's growth. We partner with Marketing, Growth R&D, and Data/AI teams to turn product and business requirements into durable technical solutions.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Architect and build high-performance, scalable web systems. Designing for performance, reliability, and long-term maintainability, not just immediate delivery.
• Own full-stack technical decisions across the frontend rendering layer, API contracts, data modeling, and backend integrations that power our customer-facing experiences.
• Design and implement distributed caching strategies across our delivery stack (CDN, edge, application layers), with a clear understanding of consistency trade-offs.
• Write high-quality, well-tested code in React, TypeScript, and Next.js, setting a bar for the team on code quality, test coverage, and engineering practices.
• Lead architecture reviews and system design discussions, producing clear technical proposals that account for scale, failure modes, and operational complexity.
• Mentor and up-level fellow engineers, establishing best practices for full-stack development, system design, and AI-native design patterns.
• Translate product and business requirements into technical architecture bridging what the business needs and what is technically sound and sustainable.
• Contribute to the team's technical roadmap, ensuring your work aligns with Gusto's transition to an AI-native company and broader team goals

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 8+ years of experience building high-scale web systems, with strong fundamentals across both frontend and backend layers.
• Strong full-stack engineering capability. You are comfortable designing APIs, modeling data, and reasoning about backend services, while being especially strong on the frontend.
• Deep frontend expertise in React, TypeScript, and Next.js, including rendering strategies (SSR, SSG, ISR), performance optimization, and component architecture.
• Systems-level thinking. You can design distributed systems, reason about failure modes, articulate trade-offs, and communicate architectural decisions clearly in writing and in review.
• Experience applying AI tools to accelerate frontend development, improve code quality, and build intelligent user experiences. Familiar with AI-driven personalization patterns and willing to experiment with AI techniques.
• Experience with web performance and caching. CDNs, edge computing, cache invalidation strategies, and how these interact with dynamic personalization.
• A high technical bar, you write testable, observable, production-grade code and hold that standard for those around you.
• Strong written communication. you can produce technical designs, ADRs, and proposals that serve both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• A balance of pragmatic execution for immediate business needs and long-term architectural thinking to build a scalable, intelligent platform.

Nice to Have

• Experience in growth engineering, product engineering, or platform engineering where you have had to balance technical quality with business outcomes.
• Hands-on experience with ML/AI integration. Personalization engines, recommendation systems, or predictive models embedded in production systems.
• Familiarity with content delivery infrastructure. Headless CMS, dynamic rendering pipelines, or experimentation frameworks.
• Experience with event-driven architectures or data pipelines used to feed AI/ML models or power real-time personalization.
• Experience with customer data platforms or behavioral analytics infrastructure.

Compensation

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $225,000 - $275,000 for San Francisco, New York, and Seattle, $205,000- $255,000 in Los Angeles, $185,000 - $235,000 in Denver, and $200,000 - $250,000 CAD for Toronto, Canada. 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.

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