Staff Software Engineer, Database Infrastructure

About Gusto At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve. All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy . AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process. About the Role: We're looking for an experienced engineer with deep expertise in distributed data systems to shape the future of Gusto's storage layer. You'll manage complex migrations, architect high-scale systems, and set standards for automation, resiliency, and security. This is a high-impact role where you'll implement distributed database solutions that enable Gusto's continued growth and scale. About the Team: The Datastores Infrastructure Engineering team designs, builds, and operates the data platforms that power Gusto's product: MySQL, Postgres, Redis, Kafka, and S3. We ensure our infrastructure is consistent, reliable, and ready to support Gusto's growing needs. As we transition to self-hosted distributed databases, the team is focused on reducing blast radius, improving operational resilience, and enabling sustainable scale. Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day: Architect, deploy, and own the full lifecycle of distributed database systems (TiDB) on Kubernetes at scale, ensuring high availability, data consistency, and operational excellence Coordinate complex, zero-downtime migrations from monolithic to distributed architectures, including vertical sharding to isolate Product Services Define and drive efficiency improvements across the storage infrastructure through query optimization, caching strategies, and workload management Define standards and build reliable automation to ensure data consistency, integrity, and security across distributed systems Continuously improve operational excellence by reducing on-call burden through sustainable, long-term solutions Partner with product engineering teams and technical collaborators to enable rapid and reliable product development Mentor engineers across the Datastores Infrastructure team on best practices for operating complex, self-hosted distributed systems, actively developing our collective operational expertise Here’s what we're looking for: 12+ years of software engineering experience building and scaling large-scale infrastructure systems Hands-on experience building and operating distributed databases on Kubernetes (strongly preferred: TiDB; alternatively: CockroachDB, Vitess, Citus, or similar solutions) Deep expertise in distributed data systems including horizontal sharding, partitioning strategies, and distributed transaction management Proven experience coordinating complex, zero-downtime migrations affecting production systems at scale 5+ years of AWS experience with RDS, Aurora, caching systems (Redis/ValKey), streaming platforms (Kafka), and infrastructure optimization at scale Strong communication skills with the ability to simplify technical complexity and collaborate on technical direction across teams Curiosity and ability to operate in an AI-native environment, leveraging AI tooling to enhance infrastructure operations, driving improvements in query optimization, performance evaluation, and infrastructure automation Bonus: Experience with service extraction and vertical sharding from monolithic architectures Bonus: Experience working with Ruby on Rails