Staff Software Engineer, People Technology

About Gusto

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR for more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide.

About the Role

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join our People Technology team as the dedicated architect and hands-on engineer behind PeopleOS — our AI-native internal HR platform — and the broader suite of custom tools and integrations that power our People tech ecosystem. In this role, you will design, build, and ship software that directly shapes how every Gustie experiences HR.

Responsibilities

• Product Engineering — PeopleOS: Act as the technical owner for PeopleOS. Partner directly with People Ops stakeholders to translate workflows into working software, driving technical design, implementation, UAT support, and release.
• Integration & Systems Development: Design, build, test, and maintain integrations across Workday, Greenhouse, Lattice, Slack, and Google Workspace. Build and maintain custom MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers that provide AI agents structured access to People Systems data.
• AI-Powered Tooling: Integrate Anthropic API (Claude) to build intelligent internal tools including QPR coaching agents, HR front door chatbots, and ticket deflection workflows. Design prompts, handle structured outputs, and build reliable AI-assisted workflows.
• Collaboration & Quality: Document integration specs, data mappings, and system configurations in Notion. Participate in Jira sprint planning and bi-weekly demos. Troubleshoot issues and implement corrective actions across the portfolio.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of full-stack software engineering experience, with production-quality work in Python, TypeScript/Node.js, or both.
• Strong experience building and consuming REST APIs (OAuth flows, rate limiting, pagination, error handling).
• Demonstrated ability to integrate SaaS platforms.
• Comfort with AI/LLM API integration (Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, or equivalent), including prompt design and response parsing.
• Experience shipping internal tools or developer tooling with real end users and feedback loops.
• Strong written communication for documentation, technical specs, and explaining trade-offs to non-engineers.
• Understanding of HR data sensitivity and familiarity with implications of labor law and data retention guidelines.

Preferred

• Familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol) server architecture.
• Experience with HR Tech ecosystems (HRIS, ATS, LMS platforms).
• Background in People Ops, HR Systems, or internal tools engineering at a high-growth tech company.
• Experience with XML, XSLT, JSON, and related integration technologies.