Head of Engineering, AI PlatformPosted today$321K–$356K

The opportunity

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.

What you'll do

  • You'll lead the group's technical strategy for building agents that assist: and automate work for small business owners, and ensuring they're built on a platform other teams at Gusto can use.

  • Set the technical direction and roadmap for the group, including the ongoing: question of what the shared platform should own and what product teams build for themselves as more of the company comes to rely on it.

  • Lead and empower the managers and tech leads in the group, supporting those: already in place, hiring ahead of the group's growth, and building strong leadership for each of the teams as they take shape.

  • Set the engineering standards for how agents behave, treating prompts, tools,: and policies as production code and owning the evaluation and guardrail approach that keeps these non-deterministic systems reliable and cost-aware.

  • Work closely with the product and data science partners in the group, and: with the teams across Gusto that build on the platform, so that it meets their needs and becomes the way teams build agents across the company.

  • Represent AI engineering to senior leadership, and keep the group's work: connected to Gusto's broader AI strategy.

What they're looking for

  • Champion AI-native ways of working, and build a team that engineers and: managers want to be part of and grow in.
  • + years in engineering, including at least 5 leading through other managers: and tech leads. You've grown other leaders and empowered them to run their teams.
  • A track record of shipping AI or agent products that people rely on, with: clear ownership of the engineering behind them. You understand how these systems work in depth: LLM agents, orchestration, tool calling, RAG, and the evaluation and monitoring that keep them dependable.
  • The ability to set technical strategy across several teams and see it: through, including aligning teams you don't directly manage around shared outcomes.