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
Identify and size the highest-leverage opportunities for Growth: go from a fuzzy problem to a clear-eyed analysis of the opportunity, a recommendation on whether to pursue it, and a plan if the answer is yes.
Anchor on problems, not headcount: dig into what's actually slowing the Growth organization down, define how to build a best in class engine, size the opportunity, and decide what's worth solving before proposing who or what is needed — not the reverse.
Build the operating rhythm for Growth and drive execution against it: planning cycles, prioritization, and a shared, prioritized roadmap that makes trade-offs and dependencies visible across Growth R&D, Product R&D, and GTM.
Bring real analytical rigor to how Growth invests: attribution, LTV, and testing/experimentation discipline — so decisions about where to deploy resources are tied clearly to business impact.
Close the gap between Growth R&D and go-to-market: build the mechanisms (shared roadmap, dependency tracking, decision forums) that let both orgs operate as one team working toward the same number, rather than two orgs trading requests.
Design an operating system anchored in technology vs. humans: build the muscle and mechanisms the Growth org can through automation, and hand off ownership once a system is running
What they're looking for
- Act as a trusted advisor to Growth leadership: pressure-test strategy, surface risks and blind spots early, and bring an opinionated point of view, not just facilitation.
- Use AI as a default, not an add-on: build reusable, AI-powered workflows for planning, synthesis, and reporting so manual coordination is the exception, not the norm.
- Spot when a team is optimizing for the wrong thing: recognize when more effort against the current approach won't get us where we need to go, and push teams toward a fundamentally different path rather than a marginal improvement.
- Raise the bar for how I&O operates, not just how Growth operates: share what's working, question what isn't, and help the broader I&O team build a stronger, more consistent craft.
