Denver, CO - Hybrid; New York, NY - Hybrid; San Francisco, CA - Hybrid; Scottsdale, AZ - HybridHybridFull-timeMidEngineeringPosted 3d ago
$88k to $500k/ yr
Hands-on builders
About the role
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
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. Once a deal is qualified, you scope, build, embed with the client, and build it yourself, code that holds up against real tax and jurisdiction data, not a prototype you clean up later. What you ship only counts once the client is paying for it, it's live, and it's measurably cutting the manual work they used to do by hand, hours saved, tickets deflected, risk reduced. You should be comfortable speaking with both technical and executive stakeholders, moving quickly from problem discovery to prototype, and turning complex workflows into production-ready agents and multi-agent systems.
Here's what you'll do day-to-day
- Scope & Qualify: Give Sales a technical feasibility read early 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, tailored from a hands-on integration engineer to a VP of Payroll Tax.
- 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 instead of just connecting to them. There's no fixed method yet, you figure out what each engagement needs and build it.
- Clear the Blockers: Diagnose and fix the 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, so scope changes don't blindside either side.
- Own the Handoff: Deliver the build and a runbook Client Success runs solo without the need to loop back the FDE.
- Close the Loop: Feed structured signal from both the sales motion and the build motion back into product and go-to-market strategy, including infrastructure gaps.
- Create Implementation Playbooks: solution patterns, demo flows, and deployment documentation that make future deployments faster.
Here's what we're looking for
- Demonstrated 5+ years of hands-on experience in a customer-facing technical role such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, AI Engineer, Implementation Engineer, Solutions Architect, Technical Consultant, or similar.
- Proven track record of shipping production systems in ambiguous, client-facing environments, with demonstrable evidence of:
- REST APIs, webhooks, event-driven systems, auth patterns, data modeling, idempotency, and failure modes, not just happy-path builds
- Building production systems in highly regulated categories, payroll, tax, or compliance fluency deep enough to run a conversation with a client's compliance team without a translator
- Agentic workflows beyond prototypes: MCP or function-calling patterns, evaluation and reliability practices
- 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 that justifies a subscription, and ship a pattern the next engagement can reuse
- Proven ability to present to and influence a range of audiences, from individual engineers to executive sponsors
- Entrepreneurial, passionate about our mission, and deep empathy for the clients whose compliance work you're automating
- Bonus points for experience with a specific HR/payroll platform's integration surface, enterprise procurement or security review processes, or MEDDPICC-style deal frameworks
Who Thrives Here
Builders who can sit with a customer, understand the real problem, quickly build an agentic solution, and present it clearly enough that the customer immediately sees the value.
You’ll thrive here if you are technical, customer-facing, fast-moving, and independent. You prototype and debug rather than only coordinate. You take responsibility for the customer outcome, communicate proactively, flag risks early, and follow through. You are comfortable being the technical adult in the room, whether you’re speaking with a customer’s architect, operations lead, engineering team, or VP of Payroll.
We’re looking for someone low-ego, collaborative, sharp, and highly accountable - someone who can build trust with customers while also building real technical solutions.
Our total cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $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. 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.
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