Hybrid Software Engineering Manager – Payroll Delivery

at Gusto

• Job title: Software Engineering Manager – Payroll Delivery
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior, Lead
• Salary: $163,000 - $204,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: Distributed Systems
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Denver, United States

About the role

• Lead engineers at Gusto, enhancing payroll delivery systems for small businesses. Drive technical vision and foster high team performance in a collaborative environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of engineers responsible for Gusto’s core payroll delivery systems, fostering a culture of ownership, inclusion, and high performance.
• Define and execute the technical vision for payroll delivery, ensuring scalability, resilience, and accuracy across high-volume financial workflows.
• Modernize legacy systems while maintaining reliability for millions of payroll transactions.
• Partner with Product, Design, and Operations leaders to align on priorities and ensure technical decisions balance speed, compliance, and long-term maintainability.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives spanning multiple domains and lead architectural strategy for distributed systems that handle complex data and regulatory requirements.
• Improve system observability, incident response, and operational excellence through automation and thoughtful design.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, technical discussions, and feedback while promoting best practices in testing, reliability, and performance.
• Collaborate across the organization to align engineering practices, drive clarity, and shape Gusto’s long-term payroll platform strategy.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including leading technically complex initiatives across multiple teams and systems.
• 4+ years of full-time experience as an Engineering PE, managing and developing product engineering team(s).
• Proven track record of designing, building, and maintaining mission-critical, high-volume transactional systems, ideally within payroll, tax, or financial domains.
• Deep experience designing APIs, data models, and distributed systems that perform reliably at scale.
• Experience driving multi-quarter technical strategy, coordinating dependencies across teams, and influencing product roadmaps through strong technical insight.
• Demonstrated success improving system observability, incident response, and operational excellence through automation and design.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to align engineers, PMs, and operational partners around complex technical trade-offs.
• Proven ability to build and sustain high-performing teams that deliver meaningful impact and foster trust, accountability, and long-term success.
• Skilled at navigating ambiguity, simplifying complexity, and driving clarity in evolving technical landscapes.
• Bonus experience includes modernizing legacy systems, introducing automation or AI into business processes, or working within regulated financial or fintech environments.
• Strategic systems thinker who connects product goals, architecture evolution, and operational excellence.
• First-principled and practical leader who balances constraints and drives effective solutions.
• Execution-oriented technical expert who blends technical depth with delivery discipline.
• Architect for resilience and scale, ensuring reliability and maintainability in high-volume systems.
• Cross-functional influencer who aligns diverse stakeholders and unifies long-term strategy.
• Engineering excellence advocate who elevates craftsmanship, documentation, and testing standards.
• Product-minded engineer who focuses on customer value and business impact.
• Calm, pragmatic problem solver who leads with focus, optimism, and clarity through complexity.

Benefits

• 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).