Join Gusto as a Staff Engineer to build user-facing AI features for retirement solutions in a collaborative team environment.
Posted by employer 3 months ago
First seen on Joblaze 3 months ago
Last verified on the company career page 10 hours ago
Role intensity
70% hands-on coding
AI in the day-to-day
AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto; team members are expected to engage with AI tools relevant to their role.
Requirements
- Experience
- 7+ years
Not disclosed in this posting: visa sponsorship.
Benefits
Joblaze summary
In the role of Retirement AI Staff Engineer at Gusto, the individual will focus on designing and deploying user-facing AI features that leverage large language models to address customer needs. Key skills include extensive software engineering experience, particularly with LLMs, and proficiency in languages like Ruby on Rails and React. This position is ideal for a senior engineer who thrives in a hands-on environment and enjoys collaborating closely with product and design teams to drive execution. Gusto's small, dedicated AI team emphasizes practical solutions and rapid iteration.
Joblaze insights
- Listed about 3 months ago — first seen on Joblaze June 23, 2026. Last confirmed on Gusto's careers page October 8, 2026.
- Salary band is below the typical range for AI/ML roles (median ~$190,000).
- Starts at or below all 58 comparable staff ai/ml roles in United States that list AI/ML we track (median $229,000 across 26 companies). See AI/ML salary trends
- AI/ML appears in 32.2% of 270 comparable staff ai/ml roles in United States; Ruby appears in 0.4% of 270 comparable staff ai/ml roles in United States.
Quick facts
- Is the Staff Software Engineer, Retirement AI role remote?
- It's hybrid — Gusto expects some on-site time in Denver, CO;San Francisco, CA;New York, NY.
- What's the salary range?
- Gusto lists $164,000–$204,000 for this role.
- How much experience is required?
- At least 7 years of relevant experience for this Staff Software Engineer, Retirement AI role.
- Where is the role based?
- Gusto is hiring for this position in Denver, CO;San Francisco, CA;New York, NY.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: AI/ML, Rails, React, Ruby.
- What seniority level is this role?
- Gusto targets staff-level candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Staff Software Engineer, Retirement AI role at Gusto.
From the original posting
About Gusto
About the Role:
You’ll be a key engineer helping us ship real, user-facing AI at Gusto Retirement. This role is all about bias to action: owning problems end-to-end, getting working software in front of customers, and iterating quickly. You’ll work closely with a small, senior team to implement language-model-powered experiences. If you like being hands-on, making pragmatic technical decisions, working closely with product & design partners, and turning ideas into production features, you’ll be a great fit.
About the Team:
We’re a small, focused AI product team building practical, high-impact experiences to help people save for retirement at Gusto Retirement. The team is senior, collaborative, and very execution-focused—PMs bring strong ideas, and we own the execution fully. We work closely with product, design, and partner engineering teams, but keep tight ownership of our priorities and roadmap.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
- Design, build, and ship production features that use large language models to solve real customer problems.
- Implement and integrate LLMs (prompting, tool loops, evaluation, monitoring, etc).
- Make pragmatic architecture decisions, de-risk tricky areas, and keep the work unblocked.
- Partner with product and design to refine ideas, shape scope, and iterate quickly on end-to-end experiences.
- Collaborate with other engineering teams to integrate with existing systems and unblock dependencies.
- Write clear, reliable, well-tested code that ships quickly and scales well.
Here’s what we're looking for:
- 7+ years of software engineering experience building and shipping production products or platforms
- Hands-on experience implementing LLM-powered features (e.g., RAG flows, agents, tool loops, workflow automation with language models, etc)
- Strong engineering skills (e.g., services, APIs, data flows); comfortable spending most of your time coding.
- Experience running or heavily contributing to a team’s execution: sprints, Jira, scoping, and cross-functional coordination.
- Bias to action: you default to trying things, iterating, and learning, rather than getting stuck in analysis or waiting for direction.
- Clear communicator who can work well with product, design, and other engineering teams without needing a formal management title.
- Experienced with Ruby on Rails (or any comparable language), React (or any comparable library).
Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $187,000-$234,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $227,000-$284,000 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.
Standard company text repeated across Gusto's postings is omitted here.