Principal Engineering Manager, Infrastructure

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 400,000 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 Role:

In this high-leverage role, you’ll lead initiatives to improve the core components of Gusto’s product offering, driving reliability, customer satisfaction, and product velocity. As we scale, you’ll need to think 3+ years ahead of current engineering capabilities while delivering world-class service for millions of users today. You'll oversee teams responsible for foundational infrastructure, including datastores, compute & networking services (Kubernetes, Istio), multi-region services, and AWS governance.

You will partner with cross-functional teams to foster an inclusive, high-performance culture that encourages experimentation and continuous improvement. In this leadership role, you’ll grow a talented team and align technical excellence with strategic goals, driving innovation and lasting impact on the product and services we deliver to our customers.

About the Team:

At Gusto, our engineering team is focused on building a diverse, high-performance culture where collaboration and inclusivity drive innovation. As a leader, you’ll recruit, mentor, and develop talented engineers while fostering a culture of growth and continuous improvement. You will work closely with leadership to define strategic roadmaps, set clear priorities, and ensure accountability for both short-term and long-term goals.

You’ll take ownership of delivering impactful technical solutions, leading the planning, execution, and successful delivery of engineering projects. In this role, you’ll balance technical excellence with pragmatic business priorities, while advocating for operational improvements that enhance product availability, performance, and cost-effectiveness across the organization. A core tenet of the Infrastructure organization is to minimize complexity while maximizing the capabilities available to our product engineering teams.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Lead and Scale the Team: Recruit, mentor, and develop a diverse team of engineers while fostering an inclusive, collaborative, and high-performance culture.
• Collaborate with leaders across backend disciplines to drive the evolution of Gusto’s technical implementation, delivering a shift from.
• Drive Strategic Roadmaps: Work closely with leadership to set priorities, define both short-term and long-term goals, and ensure accountability for progress and delivery.
• Own Delivery of Technical Solutions: Lead planning, execution, and delivery of impactful engineering projects, balancing technical excellence with practical business outcomes.
• Champion Operational Excellence: Advocate for improvements in systems, processes, and workflows that enhance product availability, performance, and cost.
• Foster Innovation: Encourage a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement within the team, leveraging insights to drive meaningful enhancements.
• Do It Boring: Unlock powerful capabilities via elegant underlying solutions, ensuring auditability and ease of operations.

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 8+ years of engineering people leadership experience
• 12+ years of hands-on infrastructure / SRE experience at scaled product companies
• Experience with working with cloud services, infrastructure as code
• Experience in empowering and nurturing multiple technical teams of 4-10 engineers 
• Experience in managing and resolving complex operational roadmap issues
• Experience in leading large scope technical projects and driving engineering excellence
• Self-driven mindset, and the ability to work in the in-between space of leading and supporting people and driving direct, hands-on impact and creating memorable experiences for customers

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $222,000-$256,000/year in Denver, Chicago, and Atlanta, $241,000-$277,000/year in Los Angeles and Seattle, and $261,000-$299,000/year 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.

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.

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