Staff Applied AI Scientist

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About Gusto

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff—like 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’re proud to support more than 400,000 small businesses across the country, and we’re building a workplace that represents and celebrates the customers we serve. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

About the Role:

In this role, you will design, build, evaluate, and ship AI products powered by proprietary and open-source LLMs. You will own the full AI development lifecycle—from problem framing and system design to framework selection, implementation, evaluation, and deployment. As an Applied AI Scientist, you will drive end-to-end customer impact, delivering reliable, production-ready intelligent systems.

About the Team:

We’re looking to accelerate AI investments across the business to solve customer pain points, and are growing our Applied AI team. You’ll be a part of the core group of experts exploring big, innovative bets, quickly prototyping solutions and shipping to customers. You're also responsible for quickly iterating on improvements and eventually scaling to production-grade AI applications. You’ll be working alongside a multidisciplinary group of Product Engineers, PMs, and Design.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Design, develop, and deploy agentic AI systems capable of autonomous reasoning, tool use, memory management, and multi-step task execution.
• Improve LLM-driven agents through pre-training, fine-tuning, reinforcement learning (including human and AI feedback), and iterative alignment for reliable decision-making.
• Build robust evaluation frameworks for LLMs and agent-based systems, including task success metrics, reasoning quality, tool-use accuracy, safety, and end-to-end workflow performance to ensure models are fit for purpose.
• Collaborate with the engineering team to determine technical requirements and SLAs for API-enabled services
• Research novel AI techniques and strategies that create magical customer experiences

Here’s what we’re looking for:

• At least 10+ years of software engineering experience (Python, Ruby or Java), 6+ years of ML experience, and 3+ years designing and shipping Gen AI models
• Proven ability to design and prototype AI solutions quickly
• Experience working on AI agent systems to automate end to end workflows
• Experience building, deploying and maintaining LLM-based applications in production
• Experience with LangGraph, TypeScript, LlamaIndex, and related tools such as LangChain, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, vector databases, and modern backend frameworks (e.g., Node.js, FastAPI) is preferred.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $245,000-$272,000 in Denver, and $288,000-$321,000 for San Francisco, and New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience, level, and expertise and may vary from the 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. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.

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. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.

Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.

Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.