Software Engineer, AI Developer Tools

About Gusto

At Gusto, were 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

As a Staff Engineer on the Developer Productivity - AI Developer Tools team, you will be the architectural anchor shaping the AI platform that accelerates engineering across Gusto

You will redefine how our entire engineering organization builds, tests, and ships software by architecting a highly secure, context-aware, "AI-native" development lifecycle.

Your mission is to eliminate developer friction through AI tools, multi-agent systems, and intelligent automation Whether you are building bespoke internal coding assistants, automating sprawling codebase refactors, or deploying AI to self-heal CI/CD pipelines, your work will directly multiply the velocity of hundreds of builders

Help us drive developer productivity by building the next generation of AI tools.

About the Team

The AI Developer Tools team is a specialized team within Developer Productivity We believe AI is the next great leap in software craftsmanship Our goal is to provide every builder at Gusto with a suite of "superpowers" tools that deeply understand our codebase and absorb operational toil so engineers can focus on creative problem-solving

We treat our fellow engineers as our primary customers, prioritizing developer experiences that are not just powerful, but absolutely delightful to use.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day

• Architect AI Core Infrastructure: Design, scale, and maintain the internal platform and APIs that integrate LLMs into the developer workflow, with a heavy focus on autonomous agents, custom retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and smart context-delivery systems.
• Drive Technical Leadership & Vision: Establish engineering best practices for building with AI at