Staff Software Engineer, Developer Productivity Async

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: As an engineer on the Developer Productivity - Async team, you will work on improving developer productivity by enhancing the tools and systems used by product engineers. You will focus on asynchronous processing, ensuring that our applications are efficient, reliable, and scalable. Your work will involve maintaining and improving the infrastructure that supports background jobs and asynchronous communication between our applications using technologies such as Sidekiq and Karafka. About the Team: The Developer Productivity team is dedicated to elevating the way engineers work at Gusto. We believe that the right tools, systems, and processes can unlock extraordinary impact across the entire engineering organization. Our goal is to equip every builder with the support they need to do their best work, from the platforms they rely on daily to the workflows that keep teams moving efficiently. We treat our fellow engineers as both customers and partners, and we are driven by a deep commitment to lifting each other up and amplifying the craft of software development at scale. Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day: Identify and solve inefficiencies in the tooling, APIs, and feedback mechanisms available to product engineers to improve developer productivity. Design, pitch, plan, measure, and implement solutions iteratively, utilizing AI tools to perform large scale code migrations. Collaborate closely with product engineering colleagues to anticipate and address upcoming changes. Develop and maintain services, abstractions, and architecture to support product engineering. Advance the use of Kafka and Sidekiq for asynchronous processing and communication for the growing number of applications at Gusto. Harden the async infrastructure to be resilient in the face of heavy loads across a wide variety of use cases, utilizing LLMs to reduce incident resolution time. Here’s what we're looking for: Successful applicants typically have 10+ years of software development experience Systems thinker with a strong ability to communicate effectively across technical and non-technical audiences. Comfortable with architectural thinking and delivering solutions through code. Deep experience with Ruby and Rails, including developer tooling for large engineering teams. Ability to work with colleagues as both customers and partners. Experience with asynchronous processing using Sidekiq and/or Kafka. Proven track record of improving developer productivity through tooling, infrastructure enhancements, and the strategic use of AI. Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $189,000-210,000 in Denver & most remote locations, and $220,000-250,000 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