Product Design Manager, Gusto Embedded Payroll

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. 

About the role

As a Product Design Manager for Gusto Embedded Payroll, you will play a foundational role in shaping how payroll comes to life inside partners’ products — defining the design vision, elevating craft, and building the systems that make embedded payroll intuitive, reliable, and scalable.

This is a player-coach position. You will manage and grow a small team of designers while also taking on individual contributor design work for high-impact areas. You’ll lead critical explorations, design end-to-end workflows, and set patterns and frameworks that others can build on. In parallel, you’ll coach designers, review work, and create the conditions for the team to deliver high-quality, compliant experiences.

You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Technical Solutions, and external platform partners to shape strategy, drive alignment, and translate technical and regulatory constraints into simple, trustworthy customer experiences. You’ll ensure your team has the context, systems, and guidance to do the best work of their careers — and that our partners can confidently deliver payroll to their customers.

This is a high-impact opportunity to lead at the intersection of product design, platform strategy, and embedded payroll tech. You will help define how Gusto’s payroll capabilities scale through partners, while creating design frameworks and experiences that become the foundation for the next generation of embedded payroll.

About the team

Gusto Embedded Payroll enables other software platforms to offer a full-stack payroll product powered by Gusto. The team builds modular payroll components, APIs, and in-product experiences that partners can integrate and extend. We operate at the intersection of design and platform architecture, balancing flexibility for partners with the reliability and compliance expected of a payroll system. The team works in a highly cross-functional environment and values rigorous thinking, customer empathy, and a systems mindset to deliver a dependable, scalable embedded payroll experience.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of two designers, fostering growth, craft excellence, and proficient cross-functional collaboration.
• Contribute directly to end-to-end product design work as an active IC—delivering high-impact experiences within complex financial systems.
• Define and drive the design vision and direction for GEP — including design systems, UX patterns, and integration strategies that scale across partners.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Technical Solutions, and external platform partners to shape product strategy, ensure alignment, and translate constraints (regulatory, technical, partner-specific) into clear, usable experiences.
• Build and evolve the UX frameworks that guide embedded payroll (e.g., integration guidelines, interaction models, partner-facing design principles).
• Drive alignment across stakeholders, ensuring that partner needs, user needs, and platform constraints are reflected in design decisions.
• Advocate for research-informed decision-making; identify insights, validate assumptions, and refine designs based on partner and user feedback.
• Contribute to Gusto’s product design leadership community—sharing insights, setting standards, and shaping our overall design excellence.

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 8+ years of product design experience, including 1–2+ years of management or formal mentorship experience leading small design teams.
• Proven ability to deliver high-quality design outcomes in complex, technical product areas.
• Robust systems thinking and ability to translate complex problems into elegant, scalable experiences.
• Demonstrated experience partnering proficiently with Product and Engineering to align vision and execution.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and balancing strategic vision with execution swiftness.
• A collaborative leader who gives clear feedback, fosters alignment, and helps teams deliver customer impact.
• AI fluency: Knowledge of AI tools or workflows that enhance design exploration, prototyping, or operational efficiency, and curiosity about emerging AI capabilities in product design.
• Deep affinity for Gusto’s mission to empower small businesses through world-class financial tools.

Compensation details

At Gusto, we strive to provide rewards that empower employees to achieve their financial and personal goals. We offer competitive compensation packages with a strong emphasis on equity based compensation (ownership in Gusto). To learn more about Gusto’s compensation philosophy and benefits offerings please view our Total Rewards Approach page.

Our cash compensation range for this role is $146,000/yr to $183,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $177,000/yr to $222,000/yr in San Francisco, Seattle & 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. 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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