Product Design Leader, Banking

About Gusto

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. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve.

All full‑time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done  expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.

Design at Gusto is made up of over 80 creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to empower small businesses and their employees. We're a cross‑functional group that is always looking for opportunities to build understanding and empathy for the people who use Gusto. We don't care much about swim lanes and though we care deeply about quality and craft, we are never precious about it.

We work closely with cross‑functional partners in Product, Engineering, Data, and Marketing to design, build, and ship experiences that make a real difference. We believe great design can make hard things possible, even delightful.

We are building an AI‑native design organization — and we mean that seriously. We're looking for designers who are already working this way: using AI to prototype ideas quickly, shorten customer feedback loops, and ship quality UX directly to customers. This isn't a future aspiration — it's how we work now, and it's changing what the design role looks like at Gusto and across the industry.

This is a leadership role, empowering a team of Product Designers. And, as the first Design Leader for Gusto's Banking team, you'll lead design across two products at different stages of maturity:
Wallet, a long‑running, established product already helping workers manage their pay, and SMB Banking, a newer banking product for small businesses. You're bringing together an established Consumer Banking design practice with a newer Business Banking effort for the first time, building the shared rituals and practices that will connect them, while staying close enough to the craft to help both products grow.

This is a player‑coach role, for now —but as Banking grows, this role's balance of hands‑on craft versus people leadership will shift over time. That's why we're looking for an experienced, hands‑on manager: someone who's managed before and is comfortable working as player‑coach, using craft to set the bar high for the team they're growing.

Gusto already serves over 500,000 small businesses and pays millions of their employees every month. Wallet puts your team's design decisions in front of a meaningful share of those employees directly, and SMB Banking opens the door to the 6.2 million employers in the US (98% with fewer than 100 employees) and the 550,000 new businesses started every year. Because Gusto already runs payroll for hundreds of thousands of businesses, we can design banking that's connected to pay, cash flow, and hiring from day one.

You'll help invent what that looks like.

• Manage an initial team of 3 designers, and hire to build your team.
• Build the rituals, hiring pipeline, and planning cadence that span both Consumer Banking and Business Banking for the first time, formalizing what already…