← Back to results

Join Gusto as a Sales Engineer to drive technical solutions for small businesses in a hybrid work environment.

Location
Denver, CO, United States
Compensation
$95k–$150k/yr
Level
mid
Type
full time · Hybrid

Posted by employer 20 hours ago

First seen on Joblaze 6 hours ago

Last verified on the company career page 6 hours ago

What you'll build

  • Scope & Qualify technical feasibility
  • Define requirements for complex opportunities
  • Build proof-of-concept solutions
  • Translate deployments into business cases
  • Create implementation playbooks

Must have

  • 5+ years of hands-on experience in a customer-facing technical role
  • Proven track record of shipping production systems
  • Experience with REST APIs and webhooks
  • Building production systems in regulated categories
  • Ability to scope technical solutions

Nice to have

  • Experience with HR/payroll platform integrations
  • Familiarity with enterprise procurement processes
  • Knowledge of MEDDPICC-style deal frameworks

Practical constraints

  • Work from office 2-3 days per week

AI in the day-to-day

AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto.

Requirements

Experience
5+ years

Not disclosed in this posting: visa sponsorship.

Benefits

401k Match Equity/Stock Options Health Insurance

Joblaze summary

In this customer-facing role, the Sales Engineer at Gusto is responsible for scoping and building technical solutions that address complex compliance challenges for clients. The position requires expertise in REST APIs, data modeling, and production systems, particularly within regulated environments like payroll and tax. Ideal candidates have over five years of experience in technical roles that involve direct client interaction and problem-solving. Gusto seeks individuals who are collaborative, accountable, and capable of translating technical concepts for diverse audiences.

Joblaze insights

  • Listed today — first seen on Joblaze November 5, 2026. Last confirmed on Gusto's careers page November 5, 2026.
  • Salary band is below the typical range for Sales/Marketing roles (median ~$142,000).
  • Starts above 38% of 40 comparable mid sales/marketing roles in United States that list AI we track (median $112,700 across 26 companies). See AI salary trends
  • AI appears in 3.5% of 1697 comparable mid sales/marketing roles in United States; REST appears in 0.1% of 1697 comparable mid sales/marketing roles in United States.

Quick facts

Is the Sales Engineer role remote?
It's hybrid — Gusto expects some on-site time in Denver, CO, United States.
What's the salary range?
Gusto lists $95,000–$150,000 for this role.
How much experience is required?
At least 5 years of relevant experience for this Sales Engineer role.
Where is the role based?
Gusto is hiring for this position in Denver, CO, United States.
What's the tech stack?
Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: AI, APIs, Compliance, REST, data modeling, event-driven systems.
What seniority level is this role?
Gusto targets mid-level candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?
Full-time for this Sales Engineer role at Gusto.

From the original posting


About Gusto

About the Role

This is a highly customer-facing role at the intersection of engineering, solution architecture, agentic AI, and customer delivery. You will work directly with stakeholders and own the technical discovery for our ongoing opportunities end to end. Once a deal is qualified, you scope, build, embed with the client, and build it yourself, code that holds up against real tax and jurisdiction data, not a prototype you clean up later. What you ship only counts once the client is paying for it, it's live, and it's measurably cutting the manual work they used to do by hand, hours saved, tickets deflected, risk reduced. You should be comfortable speaking with both technical and executive stakeholders, moving quickly from problem discovery to prototype, and turning complex workflows into production-ready agents and multi-agent systems.

Here's what you'll do day-to-day

  • Scope & Qualify: Give Sales a technical feasibility read early on ambiguous Enterprise opportunities, then own scoping the compliance challenge once the deal is sales-qualified.
  • Define the Problem: Own requirements gathering on complex, ambiguous opportunities, scoping the problem clearly enough for Sales, Product, and Engineering to align on it.
  • Prove It First: Build a working proof-of-concept of the proposed agent when a deal needs to see feasibility before committing to the full build, tailored from a hands-on integration engineer to a VP of Payroll Tax.
  • Make the Business Case: Translate every deployment into the business case that justifies the subscription: hours saved, risk reduced, compliance simplified.
  • Own the Build: Embed with clients and write the code yourself, work that runs their compliance decisions instead of just connecting to them. There's no fixed method yet, you figure out what each engagement needs and build it.
  • Clear the Blockers: Diagnose and fix the data issues, jurisdiction mapping, tax ID reconciliation, that stand between a client and production.
  • Bridge the Gap: Keep technical teams and business stakeholders aligned as requirements evolve mid-engagement, so scope changes don't blindside either side.
  • Own the Handoff: Deliver the build and a runbook Client Success runs solo without the need to loop back the FDE.
  • Close the Loop: Feed structured signal from both the sales motion and the build motion back into product and go-to-market strategy, including infrastructure gaps.
  • Create Implementation Playbooks: solution patterns, demo flows, and deployment documentation that make future deployments faster.

Here's what we're looking for

  • Demonstrated 5+ years of hands-on experience in a customer-facing technical role such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, AI Engineer, Implementation Engineer, Solutions Architect, Technical Consultant, or similar.
  • Proven track record of shipping production systems in ambiguous, client-facing environments, with demonstrable evidence of:
    • REST APIs, webhooks, event-driven systems, auth patterns, data modeling, idempotency, and failure modes, not just happy-path builds
    • Building production systems in highly regulated categories, payroll, tax, or compliance fluency deep enough to run a conversation with a client's compliance team without a translator
    • Agentic workflows beyond prototypes: MCP or function-calling patterns, evaluation and reliability practices
  • Deep technical discovery skills with the ability to navigate a high degree of ambiguity
  • Ability to scope a technical solution from an ambiguous opportunity, build the business case that justifies a subscription, and ship a pattern the next engagement can reuse
  • Proven ability to present to and influence a range of audiences, from individual engineers to executive sponsors
  • Entrepreneurial, passionate about our mission, and deep empathy for the clients whose compliance work you're automating
  • Bonus points for experience with a specific HR/payroll platform's integration surface, enterprise procurement or security review processes, or MEDDPICC-style deal frameworks

Who Thrives Here

Builders who can sit with a customer, understand the real problem, quickly build an agentic solution, and present it clearly enough that the customer immediately sees the value.

You’ll thrive here if you are technical, customer-facing, fast-moving, and independent. You prototype and debug rather than only coordinate. You take responsibility for the customer outcome, communicate proactively, flag risks early, and follow through. You are comfortable being the technical adult in the room, whether you’re speaking with a customer’s architect, operations lead, engineering team, or VP of Payroll.

We’re looking for someone low-ego, collaborative, sharp, and highly accountable - someone who can build trust with customers while also building real technical solutions.

Our total cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $88,000-140,000 in Scottsdale, $95,000-150,000 in Denver, and $115,000-181,000 in New York & San Francisco Bay Area. 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.


At Gusto, we don't use titles the traditional way, as a signal of rank or hierarchy. Instead, our titles describe two things at once — your craft (what you do, e.g. Engineering, Design) and your scope of ownership (what you're accountable for) — which is why you'll see something like "Head of X" instead of a rank word like "Director" that tells you neither. Because of this, the title on this posting may look different from what you'd expect based on the scope and seniority of the role, and from how similar roles are typically titled elsewhere. If you have questions about how this role compares to your current title or level, your recruiter can help translate.

Standard company text repeated across Gusto's postings is omitted here.

Similar positions

Gusto
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Gusto Agent & Partner Experiences (API)
Gusto · Denver, CO - Hybrid; New York, NY - Hybrid; San Francisco, CA - Hybrid
Gusto
PEO Sales, Account Executive
Gusto · Atlanta, GA - Hybrid; Denver, CO - Hybrid; Phoenix, AZ - Hybrid; San Francisco, CA - Hybrid
Gusto
Senior Staff Engineer, Expansion Experiences
Gusto · San Francisco, CA - Hybrid
Gusto
Staff Software Engineer, Unified Services Platform
Gusto · Denver, CO - Hybrid; New York, NY - Hybrid; San Francisco, CA - Hybrid
Gusto
Staff Software Engineer, AI Voice and Content
Gusto · San Francisco, CA - Hybrid