Senior Engineering Manager Onboarding & Activation

Senior Engineering Manager, Growth (Onboarding & Activation)
Join to apply for the  Senior Engineering Manager, Growth (Onboarding & Activation)  role at  Gusto .

About 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 customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 400,000 small businesses across the country and are building a workplace that represents and celebrates the customers we serve.

Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

About

The Role
As Gusto transitions to an AI-native company, this role will shape how intelligence is embedded across our Growth platform—from acquisition to onboarding to expansion. You’ll lead engineering efforts that make our systems adaptive, data‑driven, and intelligent by design.

This means building for scale and reliability, but also for learning and continuous optimization—so every part of the funnel can reason, predict, and personalize. You’ll operate at the intersection of Growth systems, AI capabilities, and platform evolution to unlock Gusto’s next phase of sustainable revenue growth.

About The Team
The Onboarding & Activation team accelerates Gusto’s revenue growth by designing, innovating, and experimenting with the most critical acquisition paths—the customer onboarding experience. We’re obsessed with building the most customer‑centric experience that helps customers complete payroll setup (Conversion) and ensure awareness and setup of other products (Activation) that they need.

We’re reimagining the onboarding experience, evolving from a single‑product journey to a multi‑product experience. Our focus shifts to intelligent growth systems that understand intent, tailor experiences, and continuously improve through data and feedback.

Here’s What You’ll Do Day‑to‑day

Build and foster an inclusive, collaborative, and impact‑oriented culture.

Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and Data Science to define, iterate, and execute initiatives contributing to revenue growth.

Champion AI‑native patterns in the Onboarding platform—designing for learning loops, feedback‑driven iteration, and safe model usage in customer‑facing contexts.

Help establish and guide the team on best practices for experimentation, evaluation, and observability in AI‑augmented Growth experiences.

Collaborate with AI platform and data science teams to integrate model‑driven insights into Onboarding workflows—such as onboarding personalization, intelligent package recommendations, and AI‑driven experiences that answer users’ questions while helping them accomplish tasks.

Engage with all development teams across Gusto to align and drive long‑term maintainability and stability of our systems.

Mentor and provide guidance to individual team members, fostering growth and development.

Here’s What We’re Looking For

12+ years of professional software development experience.

5+ years of engineering management experience, preferably with revenue‑driving teams, product engineering teams or Growth teams.

Experience managing multiple teams and EMs.

Curiosity and ability to operate in an AI‑native environment—integrating intelligence, automation, and experimentation into how we grow the business.

Experience in highly cross‑functional environments for highly complex products.

Experience in scaling Engineering organizations.

Nice to have:
Experience building and maintaining onboarding experiences and package recommendations.

Experience in experimentation and user experience optimization.

Experience working cross‑functionally with Revenue teams.

Experience incorporating AI and ML into product experiences.

Compensation & Location
Our cash compensation for this role is targeted at $220,000 - $275,000 for San Francisco, New York, and Seattle; $205,000 - $255,000 in Los Angeles; $185,000 - $235,000 in Denver; and $200,000 - $250,000 CAD for Toronto, Canada. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City.…