Engineering Manager, AI Engineering

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. 

Engineering Manager, Agent Foundations

At Gusto

Location: SF or NYC

About the Role

Gusto is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead our Agent Foundations team, a critical function that bridges cutting-edge AI research and transformative product experiences. As the Engineering Manager for Agent Foundations, you'll create an environment where engineers and designers can rapidly experiment with emerging AI capabilities, validate breakthrough ideas, and accelerate the path from research innovation to user impact.

You'll lead a team that operates at the frontier of what's possible with AI, prototyping and productionizing features that push model capabilities to their limits. Success in this role requires a 0-to-1 mindset, the ability to coach engineers and scientists through the idea maze as they explore the properties and potential of large language models, and the ability to balance rapid experimentation with strategic thinking about AI's transformative potential.

About the Team

The Agent Foundations team works on the core algorithm powering Gusto’s AI assistant and serves as Gusto's innovation accelerator. The core loop involves identifying paradigm-shifting AI capabilities, building MVPs that validate the hypotheses, and productionizing the success so that all of Gusto can benefit. It is the most research-oriented team at Gusto, operating with a "fail fast" mentality and accepting a change of failure in exchange for breakthrough discoveries. 

What You’ll Do day-to-day:

• Lead and grow a team of versatile scientists and engineers who thrive in 0-to-1 environments and can rapidly prototype across the full stack
• Identify emerging capabilities with transformative potential and translate them into compelling features
• Create a culture that embraces experimental failure as a path to breakthrough success, while maintaining momentum through rapid iteration cycles
• Develop frameworks for evaluating success beyond traditional metrics, focusing on capability breakthroughs and research learnings
• Build strong partnerships across Gusto to ensure that breakthroughs solve Gusto’s business problems
• Champion lightweight, prototype-first development practices that maximize learning velocity
• Guide the team in building "living evals" that provide rapid feedback loops between product experiences and agent development
• Represent the voice of ambitious, transformative product possibilities in planning discussions
• Foster an environment where engineers feel empowered to pursue bold ideas and pivot quickly based on learnings — without falling in love with ideas that are no longer yielding learning

What We’re Looking For:

• Have 2+ years of engineering management experience, with significant time leading teams in highly ambiguous, research-oriented environments
• Excel at managing high-variance outcomes and helping teams navigate the emotional rollercoaster of experimental work
• Have deep technical expertise across full-stack development, ML/AI systems, and emerging technologies
• Demonstrate exceptional ability to identify high-potential ideas from a sea of possibilities
• Can context-switch rapidly between multiple experimental projects while maintaining strategic clarity
• Have experience translating research breakthroughs into user-facing products or demos
• Are passionate about pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI
• Have strong communication skills to articulate the value of failed experiments and successful breakthroughs alike
• Care deeply about the societal impacts of advanced AI systems

Strong Candidates May Also Have Experience With

• Building and leading teams focused on emerging technologies or R&D
• Creating developer tools, AI agents, or other productivity-enhancing systems
• Working directly with machine learning researchers on productization efforts
• Managing portfolios of high-risk, high-reward technical projects
• Building prototyping infrastructure and frameworks that accelerate experimentation
• Leading through extreme pivots and helping teams maintain morale through failure
• Creating compelling demos that communicate complex technical capabilities
• Working with LLMs, agent systems, or other frontier AI technologies

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.

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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