Senior Engineering Manager, Design Systems

Gusto • Denver, CO;San Francisco, CA;New York, NY;Seattle, WA;Los Angeles, CA • 1m ago

Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs

Design systems have become core infrastructure in modern SaaS, especially for products that ship across multiple surfaces and teams. This role stands out because it sits at the intersection of UI foundations, platform enablement, and product delivery—treating the design system as a reusable layer that affects consistency, accessibility, and throughput across the suite. The remit also signals a maturing organization: moving from maintaining components to making the system “integration-ready” across design, code, and documentation.

From a SaaS career perspective, leading a design systems engineering org builds durable leverage: improving how many teams build, not just what one team ships. Experience with tokenization, component APIs, documentation pipelines, and cross-platform governance translates well across SaaS companies that standardize UX at scale. The emphasis on automation and AI-assisted workflows adds exposure to emerging patterns in how SaaS teams operationalize design and front-end development.

This position is best suited to an engineering leader who enjoys cross-functional roadmap work and setting standards that other teams adopt. It fits someone comfortable balancing craft (accessibility, performance, quality) with systems thinking, and who prefers building shared foundations that enable product teams to deliver consistent experiences across web, mobile, and conversational interfaces.

The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.

Job Description

Senior Engineering Manager, Design Systems

at Gusto

San Francisco, New York, Denver, Seattle

About the Role:

We’re looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the Design Systems engineering organization and shape the next generation of Gusto’s front-end foundation. This leader will partner closely with Design and Product leadership to define the technical roadmap, scale the team, and ensure our design system continues to drive quality, accessibility, and velocity across Gusto’s products.

You’ll play a key role in making the design system integration-ready—automating synchronization between design, code, and documentation, and partnering with Platform and Product teams to ensure emerging tools can build consistent, accessible, and on-brand interfaces across web, mobile, and conversational surfaces.

About the Team:

Gusto’s Design Systems team builds the foundation that powers every customer-facing experience at Gusto. We maintain and evolve Gusto’s multi-surface design system—spanning web, mobile, and conversational interfaces—and the infrastructure, accessibility standards, and documentation that help every product team ship beautiful, performant, and consistent experiences.

The team is expanding its scope to support AI-assisted workflows and deeper integration between design, code, and documentation. Our goal is to make Gusto’s design standards directly consumable by both humans and intelligent systems, simplifying how designers, engineers, and automated tools build cohesive experiences together.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

Lead and grow a world-class engineering team responsible for Gusto’s cross-platform design system.
Champion AI-native development and design workflows to enable Gusto builders.
Partner with Design leadership to define and deliver the long-term roadmap for Gusto’s design system spanning web, mobile, and conversational experiences.
Build and scale the integrations that connect design tools, codebases, and documentation, keeping the system a reliable single source of truth.
Collaborate with Platform and Product teams to define how design tokens, components, and accessibility rules are exposed for AI-assisted design and development workflows.
Set and uphold engineering standards for accessibility, performance, and reusability across all product surfaces.
Guide the team’s evolution toward supporting adaptive, multi-surface experiences that look and feel consistent across Gusto’s ecosystem.
Develop and mentor engineers and managers through coaching, feedback, and clear career growth paths.
Foster a culture of inclusion, learning, and technical excellence.

Here’s what we're looking for:

12+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years in engineering management
Proven success scaling distributed front-end or design system organizations.
Deep technical expertise in modern front-end technologies (React, TypeScript, CSS-in-JS, accessibility tooling).
Experience building or integrating developer platforms, component APIs, or design automation pipelines with AI-assisted workflows.
Strong collaboration with Design and Product partners; ability to balance design craft with engineering scalability.
Ability to translate design system principles into measurable business and technical impact.
Track record of improving developer productivity, UI consistency, and accessibility through shared systems and tooling.
Passion for creating inclusive, human-centered experiences and enabling product teams to move faster through shared foundations.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $213,000-$236,000 in Denver, $232,000-$257,000 for Los Angeles and most remote locations, $251,000-$278,000 for San Francisco, New York, and Seattle. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience, level, and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

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