Staff Software Engineer, Retirement Financial Platform

About the Role

You'll be a key engineer focused on building and owning the systems that move money and assets through Gusto Retirement. This is a very hands-on role: owning backend services and APIs end-to-end, shipping production code, and working through real financial edge cases. You'll partner closely with product, compliance, and operations to turn complex financial requirements into reliable software. If you like working on core systems where correctness matters and enjoy getting things shipped, you'll be a great fit.

Here's what you'll do day-to-day

• Design, build, and ship services and APIs for money movement and financial integrations
• Work on payments, settlements, reconciliation, and corrections involving real customer funds
• Build and support critical workflows like payroll integration, KYB/KYC, 401k loans, billing and invoicing, and IRA
• Partner with product, compliance, 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
• Mentor other engineers to help solve some of the hardest technical problems out there in very complex domains and at a large scale
• Write clear, reliable, well-tested code that ships quickly and scales well
• Build a product that our customers genuinely love

Here's what we're looking for

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building and shipping production products or platforms
• Strong experience with services, APIs, and data-heavy workflows.
• Experience working on financial systems, payments, or other high-correctness domains (or the ability to ramp quickly).
• 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.
• Clear communicator and collaborative teammate.
• Ability to mentor engineers to maximize their performance and impact
• Experience with Ruby on Rails (or a comparable backend framework).

Bonus Points

• Experience leveraging AI tools or systems to accelerate development, improve testing, and deliver new product capabilities.
• Curiosity and experimentation with emerging AI frameworks, applying and sharing best practices to evaluate and scale AI use safely across teams.

Additional information

Please note that travel to Gusto's 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, Seattle & 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 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.