Senior Staff Software Engineer

Summary

Join Gusto as a Senior Staff Software Engineer and lead the design, development, and maintenance of scalable authorization management systems. You will be responsible for platform engineering, operational excellence, hands-on coding, code reviews, and cross-functional collaboration. This role requires 12+ years of software development experience with a strong focus on platform engineering and expertise in Ruby on Rails. You will mentor junior engineers and lead complex projects. Gusto offers competitive compensation, stock equity, and the opportunity to work in a collaborative and inclusive environment. The role includes a hybrid work model with office expectations in Denver, San Francisco, and New York.

Requirements

• 12+ years of software development experience, with a strong focus on platform engineering and expertise in Ruby on Rails
• Solid understanding of platform engineering, including system design, performance optimization, and scaling backend systems. Strong experience in backend technologies and tools, especially Ruby on Rails
• Experience in building and maintaining highly available and reliable systems, with a focus on operational excellence. This includes automated monitoring, incident response, performance optimization, and ensuring system health in production environments
• Experience in designing and integrating APIs, ensuring smooth communication between different components of a platform while maintaining system integrity and performance
• Familiarity with tools and frameworks commonly used in platform engineering, such as Redis, Elasticsearch, RabbitMQ, and other technologies that help scale modern systems
• Proven experience leading platform engineering efforts, driving the development of large, complex systems, and managing projects end-to-end
• Advanced experience with data modeling, building and maintaining relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL), and designing systems that are maintainable and easily extensible
• Ability to address complex technical challenges related to platform engineering, including optimizing system performance, ensuring reliability, and scaling systems to handle large traffic
• A passion for building solutions that meet customer needs and deliver memorable experiences
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and collaborate effectively across teams

Responsibilities

• Design and implement scalable and reliable platform solutions to support Gusto’s product suite. This includes engineering robust backend systems that scale efficiently, integrating technologies like GraphQL, Sidekiq, and Kafka to optimize data handling, background job processing, and event-driven workflows
• Drive operational excellence by ensuring that the platform is highly available, reliable, and performs well in production environments. Focus on building automated monitoring, incident response, and performance optimization processes to ensure systems run smoothly
• Contribute directly to the codebase, primarily using Ruby on Rails and GraphQL, ensuring high-quality, maintainable code while supporting the performance and reliability of Gusto’s platform
• Actively participate in code reviews, providing clear and constructive feedback to maintain high engineering standards, and ensuring the team’s code quality continues to improve over time
• Collaborate closely with Product Management, Design, Security and Business teams to identify platform requirements, develop innovative solutions, and ensure seamless integration with other product components
• Focus on optimizing platform performance, working on improving load balancing, caching strategies, and database performance to ensure the platform can scale with increasing traffic and customer demands
• Mentor junior engineers, helping them solve technical challenges, pair programming as needed and growing careers of team members. Take the lead on complex projects, ensuring timely and high-quality delivery of platform solutions
• Prototype, iterate, and deploy new platform features quickly, contributing to an agile development process that brings value to customers faster
• Build a collaborative team culture that encourages creativity and innovation, ensuring a positive environment that enables engineers to thrive

Benefits

• Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $191,000-$214,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $225,000-$252,000 San Francisco & New York. Stock equity is additional
• 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)