Staff Software Engineer, HR Experience

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.

About the role

Owns full-stack features independently , from technical design through implementation, testing, and production monitoring , with light oversight.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain features for the HRX Engineering (HR Experience) product surface
• Write clean, well-tested, maintainable code across the stack
• Participate in code review, sprint planning, and retros
• Partner with product and design to translate requirements into technical solutions
• Help monitor and improve the reliability, performance, and quality of shipped features
• Participate in on-call rotation and lead incident response for owned systems
• Provide technical guidance and code-review mentorship to less-tenured engineers

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including full-stack work
• Demonstrated ability to design, build, and ship features spanning frontend, backend, and data layer with minimal oversight
• Strong proficiency in at least one modern backend language/framework (e.g., Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Python/Django) and one modern frontend framework (e.g., React, TypeScript)
• Solid understanding of relational databases , schema design, migrations, and query performance
• Comfortable owning a project end-to-end: scoping, technical design, implementation, testing, deployment, and monitoring
• Strong grounding in software engineering fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, automated testing, CI/CD
• Experience partnering cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and other engineers
• Clear written and verbal communication, including technical design docs

Nice to have

• Experience in HR tech, payroll, or fintech domains
• Experience designing REST or GraphQL APIs
• Exposure to accessibility (a11y) best practices

Benefits

Competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) for all full-time employees.

Cash Compensation

Targeted at $197,000–$247,000 for New York.

Work Environment

Employees who are based in New York will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week.