Type
FULL TIME
Work Style
On-site
Level
LEAD
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.
About the Role:
We're hiring a Principal Engineer to serve as a Technical Lead across multiple teams in the Money Group – Gusto's fastest-growing organization and a cornerstone of the company's transformation into the Small Business Finance Platform.
You'll define the long-term technical vision for systems that power cash flow management, lending, expense controls, invoicing, payments, and tax optimization (something about consumer financial health?)– ensuring the architecture scales as we grow. This role spans strategy and execution: setting architectural direction across 5+ teams, vetting external partners, prototyping new product lines to unblock product decisions, extracting services from our monolith, and mentoring the engineers around you. You'll be the person who fills whatever role the group needs to hit its goals – from hands-on coding to strategic planning to unblocking other teams.
If you're excited about building financial infrastructure with real impact on the people and businesses that power the modern economy, we'd love for you to join us.
About the Team:
Money is Gusto's fastest-growing group, building financial products for both sides of the employment relationship. For small businesses, we're extending the category of employer-facing financial services – bill pay, invoicing, working capital, expense cards, and cash flow insights that help SMBs get paid faster and pay others with confidence. For employees, we build tools that reduce financial stress: on-demand pay, high-yield cash accounts, automated savings, and credit-building features. This is a deeply technical domain spanning payments infrastructure, lending, multi-party integrations, and mobile-first experiences – with the complexity and scale to match.
Together, these teams are building toward a unified financial operating system for small businesses – accounting, banking, payments, lending, and tax – all connected to Gusto's payroll and people platform.
Our unique advantage is Gusto's authority over payroll data, which we leverage to build a payroll-confidence engine no standalone fintech can replicate.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
Here’s what we're looking for:
Our cash compensation for this role is $214,000-$260,000yr in Denver & most major metro locations, and $250,000-$300,000yr in San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate location, 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.
Prepare for your Principal Software Engineer, Money Group interview at Gusto.