Gusto

Staff Software Engineer, Financial Infrastructure

Gusto • $163K — $204K *
Finance & Insurance
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 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 or high-correctness domains
  • Comfortable with end-to-end system ownership, including operational work
  • Experience collaborating with PMs and cross-functional partners
  • Pragmatic, execution-focused engineering approach
  • Clear communication and collaborative skills
  • Ability to mentor engineers and improve their performance
  • Experience with Ruby on Rails or a comparable backend framework

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and ship services and APIs for money movement
  • Work on customer funds-related tasks like payments, settlements, and reconciliation
  • Build and support workflows like payroll integration and KYB/KYC
  • Collaborate with product, compliance, and operations for production-ready solutions
  • Debug and enhance production reliability and operational tooling
  • Work with engineering teams to integrate shared systems and platforms
  • Mentor engineers to tackle complex technical problems
  • Write clear, reliable, and scalable code
  • Create a product that customers genuinely love

Benefits

  • Requirement for travel to Gusto's office for onboarding
  • Physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City
  • Hybrid work expectations with in-office days
  • Diverse company culture that values inclusivity and varied backgrounds
Full Job Description
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.

About the Team:

The Financial Infrastructure team owns the core money and asset flow systems for Gusto Retirement. We're a senior team that works on payments, settlements, tax and compliance integrations, and much more. The work is complex and often cross-functional, so we stay focused, collaborate closely, and keep tight ownership of what we build. We work closely with product and partner teams, but we're responsible for execution and reliability end-to-end.

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.

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.

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

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at Gusto

  • Gusto
    Senior L&D Specialist
    $110K — $130K *
    New York, NY 10025 (New York County)
    Education, Government & Non-Profit
    Hybrid
  • Gusto
    Senior L&D Specialist
    $85K — $107K *
    Denver, CO 80219 (Denver County)
    Education, Government & Non-Profit
    Hybrid
  • Gusto
    Senior L&D Specialist
    $85K — $130K *
    Scottsdale, AZ 85254 (Maricopa County)
    Education, Government & Non-Profit
    Hybrid
  • Gusto
    Senior L&D Specialist
    $110K — $130K *
    San Francisco, CA 94112 (San Francisco County)
    Education, Government & Non-Profit
    Hybrid
  • Gusto
    Staff Software Engineer, Gusto Solo
    $197K — $247K *
    San Francisco, CA 94112 (San Francisco County)
    Information Technology
    Hybrid

More Finance & Insurance Jobs

Find similar Staff Software Engineer, Financial Infrastructure jobs: