Staff Software Engineer

Gusto

Staff Software Engineer building Otto, Gusto’s AI agent for solving complex payroll, benefits, and compliance problems. Owning the agent runtime, tools, backend, frontend, and evaluation systems.

Posted 8/15/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California, Colorado, New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $178,525 - $245,472 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates extensive experience in building and shipping LLM-powered systems, with a strong full-stack capability across backend services and customer-facing products. Proven ability to mentor engineers and lead multi-quarter projects that deliver measurable user impact at scale.

Highest-signal resume keywords

LLM-Powered SystemsRuby On RailsJavaScript/ReactGraphQLMentoring Engineers

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Software EngineeringFull-Stack DevelopmentTool-Calling/AgentsEvaluations/LLM-As-JudgeRetrievalAgent FrameworksProduction MonitoringTest-Driven DevelopmentScalable Agentic SystemsMulti-Quarter Project Management

Soft Skills

Clear CommunicationCollaborative Working StyleSound Judgment

Tools & Technologies

Otto PlatformAgent GraphRuntimeAction LayerObservability SystemsDeterministic ScorersOffline GatesOnline Production Monitoring

Industry Keywords

Human-In-The-Loop ApprovalAuditable IdentityPermissionsCustomer Experience (CX)Product ManagementData Collaboration

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

GraphQLJavaScriptReactRubyRuby on Rails

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design and build across the Otto platform, including the runtime and agent graph, tool/action layer, Rails/GraphQL backend, and advocate-facing experience
Own a meaningful slice of the platform end-to-end
Expand autonomous, tool-using actions with human-in-the-loop approval using secure, auditable identity and permissions
Build evaluation and observability systems, including LLM-as-judge, deterministic scorers, offline gates, and online production monitoring
Work with LLMs on prompting, tool/function design, retrieval, and feedback loops
Partner with Product, Data, Design, and CX teams to turn advocate and customer pain into shipped capabilities
Mentor engineers and set standards for responsible, scalable agentic systems

Requirements

What you’ll need

Typically 8+ years of software engineering experience owning systems end-to-end
Production experience building and shipping LLM-powered or agentic systems, including tool-calling/agents, retrieval, or evaluations
Strong full-stack range across backend services, an LLM runtime, and customer-facing products
Experience owning multi-quarter projects with measurable user impact at scale
Sound judgment about safety and blast radius when software takes real actions on real accounts
Ability to mentor engineers
Experience with agent frameworks, evaluations/LLM-as-judge, retrieval, or MCP-style tool architectures is advantageous
Experience with Ruby on Rails and/or JavaScript/React, or ability to ramp quickly
Familiarity with GraphQL and federated backends
Collaborative, test-driven, high-autonomy working style and clear communication with engineering and business stakeholders

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive base pay
Health insurance
401(k)s
Equity (RSUs)
Office work arrangement with non-office days for hybrid employees
Reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans