Staff Software Engineer, Retirement

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:

You’ll be a key engineer focused on building and owning the systems that allow tens of thousands of businesses to offer and manage 401(k)s. This is a very hands-on role: owning full stack services and APIs end-to-end, shipping production code, and evolving the architecture to support future needs. You’ll partner closely with product, compliance, and operations to turn complex financial requirements into reliable software. If you like solving hard problems and having a real impact on people’s lives, then we want to work with you.

About the Team:

The Core 401(k) team makes offering a 401(k) to employees a no brainer for every company. We’re responsible for ensuring companies don’t have to think about complex laws, rules, and regulations. We build features and capabilities for small businesses that are often unavailable through legacy providers. What we do matters. Hundreds of thousands of people are trusting us with their retirement, and that’s something we never lose sight of.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

Design, build, maintain, and ship services and features that allow companies to offer and manage 401(k)s to their employees.

Identifying opportunities to extend and modify the architecture of existing systems to support new capabilities

Identify, codify, and evangelize engineering best practices

Partner with product, design, and operations to scope work and deliver production-ready solutions.

Debug production issues and improve reliability, observability, and operational tooling.

Collaborate with other engineering teams to integrate with shared systems and platforms.

Write clear, reliable, well-tested code that ships quickly and scales well.

Here’s what we're looking for:

8+ years of software engineering experience building and shipping production products or platforms.

Comfortable working across teams and gaining influence to drive projects forward.

Strong experience with services and APIs.

Strong experience with message based systems (Sidekiq, SQS, NServiceBus, etc.)

Experience with GraphQL.

Good experience with large modern frontend applications (like React).

Comfortable owning systems end-to-end, including production support and operational work.

Experience working closely with PMs and cross-functional partners to deliver scoped work.

Pragmatic, execution-focused approach to engineering.

Comfortable working with and influencing other teams to maximize impact

Clear communicator and collaborative teammate.

Experience with Ruby on Rails (or a comparable backend framework).

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 .