Staff Software Engineer: GraphQL Platform

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. 

Staff Software Engineer: GraphQL Platform

We’re looking for a new member of the GraphQL Platform team to help us create the platform that keeps our engineering organization ambitious by making it easy to write and use high-quality, standardized, consumer-agnostic APIs. Our schema is huge, with over 5,000 types and 20,000 fields, and our job is to take on the ambitious work of improving it. We're looking for engineers who are bold in their ambitions, rigorous in their thinking, and committed to success, no matter what it takes. Our plans are measured in centuries quarters.

We are at an inflection point with our platform, actively moving from a Rails monolith with relatively little tooling around GraphQL to a collection of right-sized, federated, and governed subgraphs. Our ideal candidate will have experience building large-scale federated GraphQL APIs with schema governance, the resolve to commit to long-term projects, the pragmatism to recognize when the right thing is not the obvious thing, and the empathy to measure their impact in terms of the productivity and effectiveness of their fellow engineers.

Gusto’s GraphQL API, while originally built for our Web and Mobile clients, is expanding to cover most communication between the various domains. To support this, we’re building new tools and patterns to help make engineers productive, keep the components up-to-date, and ensure that our Product Engineering teams can focus on building impactful software quickly.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Own problems, not just code.
• Identify ways to make Gusto's codebase more effective at scale
• Participate in thorough, rigorous discussions about how to measure and solve problems.
• Support, up-level, and mentor fellow engineers through Slack, pairing sessions, and presentations.
• Collaborate and communicate changes with the engineering org through ADRs
• Integrate, add, build, and improve tooling to support Gusto's frontend development.
• Run migrations to improve Gusto's codebase using a combination of collaboration, manual upgrades, and codemods.
• Enforce and promote patterns and practices through custom analysis.

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 8+ years of experience with software development and architecture
• 5+ years of experience in GraphQL
• Experience and/or interest in Federation, Entities, Governance, architecture, and developer tooling
• Experience and/or interest in building tooling that makes your engineering colleagues successful
• Great communicator: We regularly make changes to how product engineers work, and must be able to effectively plan, document, consult, and collaborate with them. The ability to use anecdotes and data to illustrate the impact of your work.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $164,000-$237,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $235,000-$265,000 for San Francisco & 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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