Head of Engineering - CX Platform

About the Role:

• 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 to building scalable architecture and data models 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.

• Led highly distributed engineering teams and managers for at least 5 years with a minimum of 10 years of development experience.

• Strong product opinions, including the ability to tell a clear and inspiring story about where we’re going, 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, are designed to increase understanding of what we’re doing and why and drive the 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.

• Sharp skills as a builder — even as you’ve become a strategic leader, you are fundamentally a builder who can jump into problem-solving with team members when they need support.

About the Team:

Gusto is looking for a senior engineering leader to drive and execute the cross-functional strategy for our CX Platform team, a team of more than 60 people across Engineering, Product Management, Design, and Data Science. CX refers to Gusto’s Customer Experience team and supports our customers and operations teams. Our Head of Engineering will empower this role and will play a critical role in how we design, build, and drive internal adoption of our foundational experience platform at Gusto, including: 

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Driving the cross-functional strategy, execution, and impact for CX Platform teams in partnership with your counterparts in Product, Design, and Data leadership 

• Working across the company to increase understanding and adoption of platform capabilities and patterns in a systematic, measurable way across Gusto

• Building a culture of 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 engineers, operating in an architect capacity as well as  engineering people empowerers (managers, creating alignment, clarity, high morale, driving quick but informed decision making, and helping them get unblocked

• As a key stakeholder, contributes to the broader Gusto communication of vision, strategy, expectations, and stakeholder alignment via monthly and quarterly reviews with executives

• Holding a high standard for our User Experience by thinking across our stack (data models and architectural decisions to the way those influence and impact what we show in the UI) and are a voice for front-end excellence

• Getting in the weeds with 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+ years working on high-growth digital experiences, with at least four years focused on platform features

• Demonstrated experience scaling platform products end-to-end (architecture to UI) at a company with a modern tech stack.

  • Ideal candidates will have seen a platform through growth, transition, or change and will have proven methodologies and tangible examples of how they’ve driven adoption.

• Technical leaders who can bridge technology and business and can speak to the impact they’ve had in specific, tangible, and non-jargon-y terms

• Has likely held senior leadership titles focusing on platform products through strong product-minded leaders in other crafts who fit the profile and are also welcome to apply.

• Excellent technical acumen with the ability to architect, design, and discuss tradeoffs in approach with senior engineers

• Strong opinions and high standards around the user experience. Particularly adept at thinking about systems, cohesiveness, and how to approach governance. 

• Has managed senior people in the past and knows how to align them, when to give space, and when and how to coach and motivate.

• Is undaunted by organizational complexity and relishes in change management and unsticking sticky situations

• Energized by customer empathy and understanding while being able to speak to how customer impact is driving the business forward

• Thinks of themselves as a cross-functional business leader first — is not tied to a particular craft swim lane

• Able to move from high-altitude brainstorming and architecture down into problem-solving and unblocking teams in the weeds when it’s required

• Executive presence and strong storytelling skills — can craft a simple vision for a complex system, inspire people to rally around it, and drive iterative but meaningful results.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is $222,000 -$256,000 in Denver & most major metro locations, and $261,000-$299,000 for San Francisco, Seattle, & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.