Frontend Full Stack Staff Software Engineer, AI Platform Experiences

Gusto • New York, NY;Seattle, WA;San Francisco, CA • 1d ago

Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs

This Staff-level full stack role stands out in SaaS because it sits at the product layer where AI capabilities become repeatable customer experiences. The remit spans multiple delivery surfaces and depends on building patterns other teams can adopt, a hallmark of mature SaaS organizations investing in platform leverage rather than one-off features. The focus on an AI assistant also reflects a broader shift across SaaS toward embedded, workflow-native automation.

For a long-term SaaS career, the learning here is in turning experimentation into dependable product infrastructure. Work that blends interface engineering with platform thinking tends to translate well across SaaS categories, especially where teams must balance iteration speed with reliability, security, and consistent UX. The emphasis on measurement and controlled rollout also builds durable instincts around shipping, observing, and improving at scale.

This role fits engineers who prefer end-to-end ownership and are comfortable operating across product, design, and ML-adjacent partners without needing to be model builders. It will suit someone who enjoys creating reusable abstractions, mentoring through ambiguity, and sweating details like performance and quality while still keeping customer workflows central.

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

Location Preference for this role are: San Francisco Bay Area, New York City Metro, or Seattle Metro

About the Role

We're hiring an experienced full stack engineer to help small businesses work better with AI. You'll build Gus, Gusto's AI-powered assistant, and create scalable solutions that serve millions of users. As a Software Engineer at this level, you'll own projects end-to-end from initial specs to deployed features—working at the intersection of modern AI capabilities and real business needs.

About the Team

The Core Experience - AI Experiences team owns Gus, Gusto's AI-powered assistant, and the platform that enables teams across Gusto to deliver AI-native experiences to customers across web, mobile, voice, email, and agent-based channels. You'll work within Gusto's AI platform infrastructure, collaborating closely with sister teams who own the underlying agent framework. Your focus is building experiences and enabling product teams to extend and scale within the platform.

This work is directly tied to Gusto's top priorities. We operate with fast iteration cycles, deep cross-functional collaboration, and high ownership.

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

Architect, build, and test technologies supporting AI experiences within Gusto's product suite
Create standardized, self-serve patterns that enable product teams to extend Gus across web, voice, email, and agent-based experiences
Collaborate with ML and product teams on prompt engineering, clarifying question flows, and escalation logic—using A/B tests and data to drive improvements
Mentor engineers on complex technical challenges in AI, scalability, and platform infrastructure
Help scale a large Ruby/Rails and React application serving millions of users
Work with Product, Design, Security, and Technical Operations teams to understand customer needs, develop solutions, and launch features
Build customer-facing products end-to-end that customers rely on every day

Here's what we're looking for:

8+ years of software development experience, with 4+ years building scalable platforms or high-impact customer-facing products
Strong foundation in front-end engineering and modern web technologies (Ruby on Rails, React, GraphQL, or similar full-stack frameworks) with ability to build well-structured, maintainable code
Track record of owning multi-quarter projects that solve complex engineering problems and deliver measurable customer impact at scale
Experience building internal platforms or developer-facing infrastructure that enables other teams to self-serve and ship AI-powered features
Excellent cross-functional communication skills with ability to mentor engineers and collaborate effectively across teams and stakeholders
Product-minded, customer-facing engineering approach with passion for creating great customer experiences and ownership over performance, reliability, and quality
Bonus if you have AI platform development experience or strong learning orientation toward AI technologies, patterns, and frameworks (orchestration, evals, prompt systems—not ML model development)

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $163,000-$204,000 in Denver, $178,000-$223,000 for Los Angeles and most remote locations, $197,000-$247,000 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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