Java engineer [h1.location_city]

Senior Staff Software Engineer, Marketing Technology

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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. We believe in creating a workplace that celebrates our diverse clientele.

About The Role

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Marketing Technology team, you will spearhead the architectural evolution of Gusto’s new MarTech stack as we transition to an AI-native company. This is a frontend-leaning architecture role where you will design and build foundational web platforms that connect our customer data with communication channels. You will transform our

Headless CMS

into an

AI-driven personalization engine

and architect high-performance frontend systems that reason about customer data, predict user intent, and serve the most relevant experience. You’ll integrate these platforms with our central CDP and multi-channel orchestration engine to create adaptive, personalized user journeys.

About The Team

The Marketing Technology (MarTech) team builds the next generation of infrastructure powering customer acquisition and engagement funnels. We focus on moving beyond deterministic user journeys, building intelligent growth systems that understand intent, tailor real-time experiences, and continuously improve through data and feedback. We prioritize quality, observability, and uptime, partnering closely with Marketing, Sales, Growth R&D, and Operations.

Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day

Architect and evolve our customer-facing web platforms for performance, scale, AI-driven personalization, and intelligent experimentation.

Build and maintain integrations with our MarTech stack (Segment, Braze, etc.) to create feedback loops for AI models and enable model-driven actions.

Implement and optimize caching strategies across our delivery stack (CDN, edge).

Write high-quality, well-tested frontend code leveraging AI-powered tools and techniques to accelerate development, improve test generation, and ensure code reliability.

Support, mentor, and up-level fellow engineers, helping to establish best practices for AI-native design patterns.

Partner cross-functionally with Marketing and Sales to translate business needs into technical solutions.

Own the long-term technical roadmap for MarTech, ensuring it aligns with Gusto’s transition to an AI-native company.

Here’s What We're Looking For

12+ years of experience building web systems connected to a headless CMS.

Curiosity and ability to operate in an AI-native environment.

Experience building modern frontend applications with technologies such as React, TypeScript, and Next.js.

Experience with web performance, CDNs, and advanced caching strategies.

Experience integrating with MarTech systems (e.g., CDPs, CRMs, orchestration tools).

A systems thinker with excellent written communication and collaboration skills.

Ability to act as a thought partner for both technical and business teams.

A balance of pragmatic execution for immediate business needs and long-term architectural thinking.

Nice to have :

Hands-on experience designing or implementing AI-driven personalization engines, recommendation systems, or predictive intent models.

Experience with generative AI or LLMs, particularly in applications related to content personalization or building intelligent customer-facing agents.

Familiarity with building the frontend components of data feedback loops used for retraining or fine-tuning AI models.

Compensation

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at

$191,000 / yr to $225,000 / yr

in Denver & most remote locations, and

$225,000 / yr to $265,000 / yr

for San Francisco, Seattle & New York. Stock equity is additional. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience.

Work-from-office expectations : Employees based in Denver, San Francisco, or New York are expected to work from the office on designated days, approximately

2-3 days

per week.

If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any point throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.

Seniority level

Mid-Senior level

Employment type

Full-time

Job function

Engineering and Information Technology

Industries

Software Development

EEO Statement

Gusto is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on protected characteristics. We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories consistently with applicable law and are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans.

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