Staff Software Engineer, AI Voice and Content

Gusto · San Francisco

Software EngineeringHybridposted 2mo ago

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.

We’re looking for a seasoned full-stack software engineer to join Gusto’s Growth team and lead the next generation of AI-powered customer acquisition, onboarding, and lifecycle engagement experiences. This role is best suited for an engineer who enjoys operating across the full product lifecycle, from shaping early concepts and technical direction through launch, evaluation, iteration, and long-term ownership in production.

On this team, you’ll help define and build customer-facing AI systems that make Growth experiences more effective, more personalized, and easier to scale. In particular, this role will focus on two strategic areas: building an AI Voice Agent that supports onboarding of new customers, and building and scaling AI-driven email experiences across the funnel powered by our LLM-powered content generation engine. The expectation is not just experimentation, but clear ownership of production workflows and measurable customer impact within Growth.

If you're drawn to work that combines technical craft with real-world impact — helping power the livelihoods of millions using Gusto products — join us!

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

Design, build, and operate AI-powered Growth experiences across onboarding and lifecycle engagement, with a focus on conversational and communication-driven product surfaces.
Own the technical strategy and implementation for an AI Voice Agent that helps onboard customers, including the product workflows, backend integrations, safety controls, and evaluation loops needed to make the experience reliable in production.
Build and scale AI-driven email systems across the funnel including generation workflows, orchestration, experimentation, quality controls, and iteration based on product feedback and business outcomes.
Partner closely with Product, Data, Design, Marketing, and Platform teams to understand customer pain points, identify Growth opportunities, prototype quickly, and ship improvements that move acquisition, activation, and conversion metrics.
Design reliable APIs, backend services, and frontend experiences that support personalized onboarding, communications, workflow automation, and other customer-facing Growth journeys.
Establish strong engineering patterns for applied AI development, including prompt design, tool integration, evaluation-driven iteration, observability, and safe rollout practices.
Help the team make good long-term architectural decisions around conversational systems, outbound communication workflows, and the supporting platform capabilities they depend on.
Mentor other engineers and raise the bar on technical execution, product quality, and responsible use of AI across the team.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Successful applicants typically have 8+ years of software development experience building and shipping customer-facing product experiences at scale.
Experience building full-stack systems, including frontend applications, backend APIs, and production services with clear ownership after launch.
Experience in Growth-related product areas such as onboarding, communications, workflow automation, CRM, lifecycle marketing, or adjacent customer journey systems.
Strong applied AI fluency, including experience with prompt design, tool integration, conversational experiences, content generation systems, or evaluation-driven iteration.
Experience owning multi-quarter initiatives that solve ambiguous engineering problems and produce measurable business and customer impact.
Strong product and engineering judgment, with the ability to balance experimentation speed with quality, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
Ability to collaborate effectively across engineering and business stakeholders, especially in product areas where technical decisions directly affect customer experience and funnel performance.
A track record of mentoring engineers and helping teams scale their impact.

Others:

Experience in or interest working in Ruby on Rails
Appreciation for a collaborative, test-driven environment
Ability to build well-structured, maintainable, well-documented code
Ability to effectively communicate across engineering teams and with business stakeholders

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 & 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.