Senior Engineering Manager, Design Systems

About Gusto

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff—like payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR—so owners can focus on their craft and customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we’re proud to support more than 400,000 small businesses across the country, and we’re building a workplace that represents and celebrates the customers we serve. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy. 

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.

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. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.

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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