Gusto

Senior Software Engineer

Gusto$110K — $130K *
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 6+ years of experience in building and shipping production software
  • 2+ years as the technical owner of projects or a team
  • Proficient with Ruby on Rails, React, and Java in production environments
  • Experience with microservice architecture and distributed systems
  • Demonstrated ability to use AI development tools effectively for team output

Responsibilities

  • Lead software development projects from scoping to post-launch measurement
  • Own architecture and implementation across multiple tech stacks
  • Define service boundaries and API contracts within microservices
  • Establish workflows for AI-assisted development and mentor other engineers
  • Drive PostgreSQL optimization and manage technical risk for major features

Benefits

  • Opportunities for professional development and mentoring
  • Collaborative and innovative work environment
  • Engagement in cutting-edge AI tooling
  • Exposure to strategic decision-making within engineering leadership
  • Participation in a culture that values engineering excellence
Full Job Description
Senior Software Engineer/Full Stack Developer for SaaS platform

Description

JOB SUMMARY

You lead software development projects end to end - scoping, technical design, delivery, and rollout - while writing production code across Ruby on Rails, React, and Java. You think in service boundaries, you raise the engineering bar around you, and you have made AI-assisted development a measurable advantage for your whole team, not just for yourself.

OUR STACK

Ruby on Rails • Java • React • PostgreSQL • Node.js • Microservices • Metabase • REST/GraphQL APIs • GCP • Git • CI/CD • AI-assisted development

WHAT YOU'LL DO
  • Lead software development projects end to end - scoping, technical design, execution, rollout, and post-launch measurement
  • Own the architecture and implementation of features spanning React front ends, Rails and Java services, and PostgreSQL
  • Define service boundaries, API contracts, and data models across our microservice architecture
  • Serve as the team's AI-enablement lead - establish the workflows, patterns, and guardrails for AI-assisted development, and teach mid-level and junior engineers to use them well
  • Mentor mid-level and junior engineers through design reviews, pairing, and 1:1 guidance
  • Set coding standards, review practices, and architectural patterns across the team
  • Drive PostgreSQL optimization - query tuning, indexing, partitioning, connection pooling, replication
  • Own technical risk assessment and mitigation for major feature releases
  • Champion observability - logging, alerting, and monitoring best practices in GCP
  • Collaborate with engineering leadership on roadmap planning and capacity estimation
  • Evaluate and introduce new tools, libraries, and approaches with disciplined rigor
  • Participate in the on-call rotation and lead incident response

WHAT YOU BRING - TECHNICAL (ALL REQUIRED)
  • 6+ years building and shipping production software, including 2+ years as the technical owner of projects or a team
  • A proven track record leading software development projects end to end - scoping, design, delivery, rollout, and accountability for the outcome. Be ready to walk us through two projects you led.
  • Ruby on Rails in production - you have owned Rails services and their data models, not just contributed tickets to them
  • React in production - component architecture, hooks, state management, and front-end testing. TypeScript strongly preferred.
  • Java in production - modern Java with Spring or an equivalent framework, plus the build and test tooling around it
  • Microservice frameworks and distributed systems - service decomposition, inter-service communication, caching, queuing, and consistency trade-offs. Strangler Fig migrations a major plus.
  • A proven record of using AI/LLM development tools to increase throughput - and of teaching others to do the same. Come prepared to describe your workflow, what you measured, and how your team's output changed, not just your own.
  • Sound judgment about AI-generated code - you can tell when it is wrong, when it introduces a security or performance problem, and when to throw it out entirely
  • Strong PostgreSQL engineering - performance tuning, indexing, schema design, and migrations at scale; comfort with analytics and reporting pipelines (Metabase or similar)
  • Strong API design - REST and GraphQL, versioning, and backward compatibility; production Node.js experience
  • Hands-on GCP or equivalent cloud experience (IAM, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, BigQuery), containerized services, and ownership of CI/CD pipelines
  • Automated testing discipline and security-conscious engineering - OWASP, auth/authz patterns, and PCI DSS or comparable regulated-data experience

WHAT YOU BRING - BEYOND THE CODE
  • Leads through influence - engineers look to you for patterns, not just answers
  • Coaches deliberately - you measure your impact partly by how much better the engineers around you get
  • Executive presence in technical conversations - you hold your own with product, design, and business stakeholders
  • Constructive and direct - you give hard feedback kindly and receive it professionally
  • Strategic thinker who balances long-term architecture with short-term delivery pressure
  • Visible culture carrier - you model the engineering values you want the team to have

NICE TO HAVE
  • Experience leading a team through a platform migration or re-architecture, especially monolith to microservices
  • Experience introducing AI tooling at an organization - standards, guardrails, or a formal enablement program
  • Experience in vertical SaaS or sports/fitness tech
  • Contributions to technical strategy or engineering hiring
  • Experience with payments or other regulated data domains

HOW WE'LL EVALUATE
  • A project-leadership deep dive on something you owned end to end - how you scoped it, what went wrong, and what you decided
  • A practical working session with AI tools allowed and encouraged - we care whether the result is correct and whether you can defend every line of it
  • A system design conversation on service boundaries, API contracts, and data modeling
  • A short session on how you would raise this team's AI-assisted throughput in your first 90 days

About Gusto

Gusto is a cloud-based human resources software platform that provides payroll, benefits, and HR management services to small businesses. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Gusto's platform automates many of the administrative tasks associated with HR, such as payroll processing, tax filings, and benefits administration. The company also offers a range of HR services, including compliance support, employee onboarding, and time tracking. Gusto is committed to helping small businesses succeed by providing them with the tools and resources they need to manage their HR operations more efficiently.
Learn more about Gusto
Size
1,000 employees
Industry
Founded
2012

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