Staff Software Engineer, Retirement Money Planning
About the Role:
You'll be a key full-stack engineer focused on building and owning the systems that empower over a million savers (including entrepreneurs) to save for their retirement via 401(k)s, IRAs, and more. This is a very hands-on role: owning backend services and APIs end-to-end, building the interfaces savers use to manage their accounts, and working through real financial edge cases. You'll partner closely with Product, Design, Compliance, and Operations to turn complex financial requirements into reliable software. If you like solving hard problems and having a real impact on people's lives, then we want to work with you.
About the Team:
The Money Planning team owns the user experience for employees, savers, and entrepreneurs to manage their retirement and savings. We build features and capabilities for savers to manage their contributions, portfolios, and withdrawals. What we do matters. People are trusting us with their retirement, and that's something we never lose sight of.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
Design, build, and test the experience that enables savers to manage their 401(k)s, IRAs, and more
Contribute to the architecture of existing systems to support new capabilities
Apply AI tools as a regular part of your engineering workflow, and bring an AI-native lens to product decisions: identify where AI can reduce saver effort, simplify complex retirement decisions, and surface proactive guidance before savers know they need it
Advocate for the needs of our savers and entrepreneurs who rely on Gusto to help them save for retirement correctly and confidently
Collaborate on complex and ambiguous problems with partners across Engineering, Product Management, Design, Compliance, Operations, and other cross-functional teams
Engage in a highly supportive environment working with others to drive productivity and innovation
Debug production issues and improve reliability, observability, and operational tooling
Identify and prioritize long-term investments to improve foundational systems and architecture
Write clear, reliable, well-tested code that ships quickly and scales well
Here’s what we're looking for:
8+ years of software engineering experience building and shipping production products or platforms
Strong experience working across teams and gaining influence to drive projects forward
Strong experience with services and APIs
Strong experience with message-based systems (Sidekiq, Kafka, etc.)
Experience with Ruby on Rails a must have
Strong experience with large modern frontend applications (like React)
Experience with GraphQL
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
Comfortable working with and influencing other teams to maximize impact
Clear communicator and collaborative teammate
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, 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.