About Gusto

Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of full-service payroll, Gusto offers health insurance, 401(k)s, expert HR, and team management tools. Today, Gusto offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York serve more than 300,000 businesses nationwide.

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That’s why we’re committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy

About the Team and Role

The Risk Engineering team is responsible for defining best-in-class user experiences in order to mitigate financial and reputation risk.  This role will be responsible for leading the team that scales our platform to these products, and builds and maintains a.) bad actor platform capabilities to prevent fraudsters from abusing Gusto’s platform while improving false positive rate and, b.) the credit underwriting and collections experiences to enable faster and greater access to credit while minimizing financial loss. 

This role will also be tasked with retaining, building, and leading a high-performing and highly engaged engineering team. They will help the business scale through private and public phases of our company-building journey.

As a Senior Engineering Manager on the Risk Engineering team, you’ll directly empower 5+ engineers, supporting them in their continued growth and success. You’ll collaborate with a talented cross-functional team of Product, Design, and Data partners, focusing on building experiences that delight customers.

Key Responsibilities

  • Develop the Engineering team to help scale Risk policies and experiences tailored to unique emerging products across Gusto.
  • Collaborate with Product, Data Science, Design, Operations, and external stakeholder partners who own existing and new emerging products to decide on how to apply existing and/or define new policies around Fraud prevention, Underwriting, and Collections. 
  • Build and scale the infrastructure of our existing customer-facing experiences to minimize developmental investment required for launching functionality that help our businesses and individuals better manage their finances. Requires a strong understanding of the Risk domain in order to make tradeoffs that build customer trust.
  • Lead, empower and coach a team across engineering to i.) drive technical guidance and consistent execution of the next generation of payments capabilities that enable Gusto to expand its product offerings; ii.) recruit, hire, and onboard new engineering team members; iii.) identify and address any roadblocks or challenges faced by the team; and iv.) deliver scaled engineering solutions on time.
  • Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence within the team. In addition,  collaborate and communicate with senior management and stakeholders to develop and execute long-term strategies for Gusto’s engineering department.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

  • Build and foster an inclusive, collaborative and high performance culture
  • Conduct regular 1:1s with your team members to support their continued growth and learning
  • Collaborate with our product management and design teams to define problem spaces and lead technical projects from initial planning, execution, to final delivery
  • Partner with Product, Design, Data and others within and outside your team
  • Help build and manage team processes and create a culture that enables the team to do its best work
  • Provide and receive mentorship and peer support

Here’s what we're looking for:

  • 10+ years of relevant hands-on programming experience
  • 4+ years of engineering management experience
  • Experience on a Payments and/or Risk team
  • Comfortable guiding the team strategically as well as contributing hands on where it’s needed to support the team. Expect to be reviewing code, and coding where it’s needed to move the team along.
  • Comfortable navigating a complex and ambiguous problem space, and asking for help and clarification when needed
  • Experience in negotiating cross-functional projects and driving business growth
  • A desire to grow and learn on the job
  • Completed a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related discipline; higher education preferred

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $164,000-$204,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $225,000-$265,000 in San Francisco and New York. 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.

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.


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.

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Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it helps us to build better products, better serve our customers, and makes our company stronger. 

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