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About the Role:
We're looking for a people leader who is ready to step into a high-impact role at a pivotal moment for Gusto HR Partners. This isn't a role for someone who wants to manage a steady-state team - it's for a builder. You'll get to help shape how leadership works within Gusto HR, develop a team of senior HR consultants, and drive the operational and service excellence that defines what great looks like as we scale.
You'll bring a systems-thinking mindset, a coaching orientation, and the credibility to earn trust with a high-caliber team. Whether you're coming from inside Gusto or from the outside, you're someone who leads with authenticity, leans into hard conversations, and thrives in ambiguity.
About the Team:
The Gusto HR Partners team is a group of senior HR consultants who serve as embedded, fractional HR leaders for the small businesses we support — bringing strategic guidance, operational expertise, and a deeply human touch to every client relationship. We're at an inflection point: scaling our service model, pioneering AI-native ways of working, and redefining what world-class fractional HR looks like for the 400,000+ businesses on the Gusto platform. As a leader on this team, you'll join a tight-knit, mission-driven group that prizes craft, client outcomes, and continuous evolution — and you'll help shape the playbook for how we grow from here.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
- Lead and develop a team of senior HR consultants, coaching them to exceed expectations, building trust through authenticity, and being a hands-on player-coach when needed
- Drive performance across client satisfaction, retention, and consultant productivity metrics in a high-growth environment
- Scale operations through process optimization, AI integration, and technology enablement to improve consultant-to-client efficiency
- Partner with product teams to pioneer AI-native HR services that augment human expertise and create new service possibilities
- Navigate ambiguity and build scalable systems from the ground up, helping to write the playbook
- Coach and develop your team
- Champion change management: build new processes, drive adoption, and iterate quickly in a fast-moving environment
- Collaborate with peer leaders on hiring strategy, process innovation, and cross-functional initiatives
- Shape organizational strategy as we expand service offerings and redefine what's possible in fractional HR service
Here’s what we're looking for:
- Minimum 8+ years of progressive HR or related professional services experience
- Early people leadership experience or strong evidence of leading without authority (mentoring, onboarding, influencing peers, or owning team initiatives) and scaling teams
- Experience operating in client-facing environments (HR, consulting, or service delivery models)
- Demonstrated ability to manage and prioritize across multiple stakeholders or clients
- Evidence of contributing to or driving process improvements, team initiatives, or new ways of working
- Strong track record of delivering high-quality work, building trust, and maintaining client satisfaction
- Experience collaborating cross-functionally and contributing to team-level outcomes, not just individual success
- Experience partnering with Product, Ops, and GTM to innovate and scale
- Familiarity with AI/ML applications in professional services or HR
- AI and technology fluency with a vision for how emerging tools can transform professional services delivery
Compensation
Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $127,000/yr - $157,000/yr in Denver, and $154,000 - $191,000 for 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.
