Sales Engineer

Job Description

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.

This is a highly customer-facing role at the intersection of engineering, solution architecture, agentic AI, and customer delivery. You will work directly with stakeholders and own the technical discovery for our ongoing opportunities end to end.

Responsibilities

• Scope & Qualify: Provide Sales with a technical feasibility read on ambiguous Enterprise opportunities, then own scoping the compliance challenge once the deal is sales-qualified.
• Define the Problem: Own requirements gathering on complex, ambiguous opportunities, scoping the problem clearly enough for Sales, Product, and Engineering to align on it.
• Prove It First: Build a working proof-of-concept of the proposed agent when a deal needs to see feasibility before committing to the full build.
• Make the Business Case: Translate every deployment into the business case that justifies the subscription: hours saved, risk reduced, compliance simplified.
• Own the Build: Embed with clients and write the code yourself, work that runs their compliance decisions.
• Clear the Blockers: Diagnose and fix data issues, jurisdiction mapping, tax ID reconciliation, that stand between a client and production.
• Bridge the Gap: Keep technical teams and business stakeholders aligned as requirements evolve mid-engagement.
• Own the Handoff: Deliver the build and a runbook for Client Success to run solo.
• Close the Loop: Feed structured signal from both the sales motion and the build motion back into product and go-to-market strategy.
• Create Implementation Playbooks: Solution patterns, demo flows, and deployment documentation that make future deployments faster.

Requirements

• Demonstrated 5+ years of hands-on experience in a customer-facing technical role.
• Proven track record of shipping production systems in ambiguous, client-facing environments.
• Experience with REST APIs, webhooks, event-driven systems, auth patterns, data modeling, idempotency, and failure modes.
• Building production systems in highly regulated categories, such as payroll, tax, or compliance.
• Agentic workflows beyond prototypes.
• Deep technical discovery skills with the ability to navigate a high degree of ambiguity.
• Ability to scope a technical solution from an ambiguous opportunity, build the business case, and ship a reusable pattern.
• Proven ability to present to and influence a range of audiences.
• Entrepreneurial mindset, passionate about the mission, and deep empathy for clients.

Compensation

• Targeted total cash compensation: $88,000-140,000 in Scottsdale, $95,000-150,000 in Denver, and $115,000-181,000 in New York & San Francisco Bay Area.
• Stock equity is additional.

Location

• Denver, CO - Hybrid
• New York, NY - Hybrid
• San Francisco, CA - Hybrid
• Scottsdale, AZ - Hybrid