Staff Software Engineer, Tax Experiences
Gusto, Inc.
San Francisco
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 ourTotal 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 Team:
We’re a small group of talented engineers, designers, data scientists, and product managers working to improve the experience of collecting, calculating, paying, and filing taxes. Our team aims to make the complexity of dealing with hundreds of tax agencies disappear and to make compliance easy. We own everything a customer sees and does around taxes: from onboarding through ongoing account management, payments, and filings. We make sure that communication about those experiences is clear and actionable, and that the underlying systems are reasonable and sustainable to build on. This team is responsible for the full stack of work, not just the frontend. We implement work up and down the stack to build these delightful experiences, and we partner regularly with all of the teams in the Tax Organization and many teams outside of it as well. This is one of the most important teams at Gusto. Most companies know how to pay their people, but many companies don't know how to properly withhold, pay, or file taxes. One of the reasons that they pay for Gusto every month is the exact product that we provide.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
- Execute on the technical strategy for your team's domain in alignment with team and group-level OKRs, and contribute to the broader Tax Engineering roadmap through collaboration.
- Design, build, and test the experience that enables people to add and update their tax information at Gusto.
- Advocate for the needs of our customers, employers and employees who rely on Gusto to ensure that their taxes are collected, calculated, and filed correctly.
- Collaborate on complex and ambiguous problems with partnerships across Engineering, Product Management, Design, Data Science, Compliance, Operations, and other cross-functional teams.
- Support the software platform that powers multiple 1st and 3rd party products and serves millions of businesses.
- Mentor and grow fellow engineers working to create holistic and scalable solutions
- Drive the product development process from concept to launch, delivering delightful products that make payroll, taxes, and compliance simple and easy.
- Improve the productivity and happiness of our teams with the design systems, components, and interfaces you build.
- Engage in a highly supportive environment working with others to drive productivity and innovation.
- Identify and prioritize long-term investments to improve foundational systems and architecture.
- Apply AI tools as a regular part of your engineering workflow, and bring an AI-native lens to product decisions: identify where AI can reduce customer effort, simplify complex tax workflows, and surface proactive guidance before customers know they need it.
Here’s what we're looking for:
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with expertise in React, TypeScript, as well as experience with Ruby on Rails, SQL, or other backend languages
- Experience in one of these domains is preferred: Payroll, Taxes, or Compliance
- Experience working in large, complex codebases and a demonstrated ability to improve them incrementally without breaking things. Designing, building, and testing production level code that functions at scale.
- An aptitude and interest in bringing clarity and simplicity to complex and ambiguous problems
- Experience applying AI tools to accelerate development, improve code quality, and build testing. Familiar with AI-assisted development workflows.
- A preference for working collaboratively with people, not in a silo. Pairing, thought partnership, and shared investigation feel natural, not like overhead.
- Able to communicate technical complexity clearly to product and design partners, and help the team navigate tradeoffs with full context.
- Strong systems thinking: the ability to build mental models of unfamiliar systems, ask the right questions, and produce clear analysis that others can act on.
Please note that a two day travel to a Gusto office for onboarding is required for this position. If you have any questions regarding this requirement, please share with your recruiter.
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.
At Gusto, we don't use titles the traditional way, as a signal of rank or hierarchy. Instead, our titles describe two things at once — your craft (what you do, e.g. Engineering, Design) and your scope of ownership (what you're accountable for) — which is why you'll see something like "Head of X" instead of a rank word like "Director" that tells you neither. Because of this, the title on this posting may look different from what you'd expect based on the scope and seniority of the role, and from how similar roles are typically titled elsewhere. If you have questions about how this role compares to your current title or level, your recruiter can help translate.
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.
Reliable, consistent presence: We expect regular and predictable attendance, whether you're working in-office, hybrid, or fully remote, so that you stay closely connected to your team, customers, and stakeholders in real time and ensure colleagues and customers receive the timely support and responsiveness they deserve.
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.
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