hero

We invest in people who change the way the world works.

Interested in working with them?
64
companies
936
Jobs

Head of Product, Experience Platform

Gusto

Gusto

Product
Multiple locations
Posted on Aug 24, 2023


About Gusto

Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of full-service payroll, Gusto offers health insurance, 401(k)s, expert HR, and team management tools. Today, Gusto offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York serve more than 300,000 businesses nationwide.

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That’s why we’re committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

Gusto is looking for a senior leader to drive and execute on the cross-functional strategy for our People Operating System (OS) teams, a team of more than 40 people across Engineering, Product Management, Design, and Data Science. This role will be empowered directly by our Chief Design Officer who is also the Head of Core Experiences and will play a critical role in how we design, build and drive internal adoption of our foundational experience platform at Gusto including:

  • Core data models and technical architecture: Enabling Gusto to scale a great experience quickly well into the future.
  • Commons experiences: Scaling our approach to the foundational experiences (ex: navigation) that our app teams build on top of to ensure teams can move quickly and our customers experience Gusto as cohesive and easy to use.
  • Reporting platform: Building a reporting platform that helps customers get the information they need to make great decisions and enables app teams across Gusto to make their data available via reporting and data viz.
  • Communications: Modernizing our customer communications technology to empower Gusto teams to effectively reach customers across web, mobile app, email, and SMS channels.
  • Permissions, roles, and automations: Driving a deep understanding of the employee lifecycle and how companies work together in the real world to enable simpler, less manual, and more streamlined workflows.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

  • Driving the cross-functional strategy, execution, and impact for People OS teams
  • Working across the company to increase adoption of platform capabilities and patterns in a systematic, measurable way across Gusto
  • Building a culture of understanding and enthusiasm for our platform work that leads to greater productivity and higher quality and cohesion of the experiences we ship to customers
  • Empowering a team of senior R&D people, creating alignment, clarity, high morale, driving quick but informed decision making, and helping them get unblocked
  • Stakeholder and broader Gusto communication of vision, strategy, and expectations, and stakeholder alignment via driving monthly and quarterly reviews with executives
  • Holding a high standard for our UX by thinking across our stack (data models and architectural decisions to the way those influence and impact what we show in the UI)
  • Getting in the weeds with very senior IC leaders across engineering, design, data, and product to discuss trade offs, define the green path, and help advance great decisions

Here’s what we're looking for:

  • 10 or more years of experience in in product-driven roles, ideally with at least some of that focused solving platform-related problems
  • Demonstrated experience scaling platform products, including proven strategies to drive internal adoption of new methods, patterns, and capabilities through motivating and inspiring
  • Strong technical acumen with the ability to understand and debate tradeoffs and approaches around how architecture and data models inform what we build and how we build
  • A high standard, systems-first approach, and strong point of view for the user experience informed by customer empathy, research, data, and customer support insights
  • Strong product opinions, including the ability to tell a story about where we’re going that is clear and inspiring, and work with teams to map dependencies, risks, and tradeoffs to increase velocity and make the vision real
  • The ability to inspire and motivate a cross functional team including PMs, designers, engineers, data scientists, and other partners
  • Tenacity, directness, and the ability to build relationships across the organization, including with app leads and execs, designed to increase understanding of what we’re doing, why, and to drive velocity of adoption of our platform capabilities
  • A long view and strong opinion on where we’re going and what it will take to get there as one Gusto

At Gusto, we strive to provide rewards that empower employees to achieve their financial and personal goals. We offer competitive compensation packages with a strong emphasis on equity based compensation (ownership in Gusto). To learn more about Gusto’s compensation philosophy and benefits offerings please view our Total Rewards Approach page.

Our cash compensation range for this role is $212,000/yr to $247,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $250,000/yr to $290,000/yr in San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate location, experience and expertise, and may vary from the level and amounts listed above.


Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale.

Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas.

When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required.


Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.

Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you require assistance in filling out a Gusto job application, please reach out to candidate-accommodations@gusto.com.