Staff Software Engineer, Database Infrastructure

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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:

We're looking for an experienced engineer with deep expertise in distributed data systems to shape the future of Gusto's storage layer. You'll manage complex migrations, architect high-scale systems, and set standards for automation, resiliency, and security. This is a high-impact role where you'll implement distributed database solutions that enable Gusto's continued growth and scale.

About the Team:

The Datastores Infrastructure Engineering team designs, builds, and operates the data platforms that power Gusto's product: MySQL, Postgres, Redis, Kafka, and S3. We ensure our infrastructure is consistent, reliable, and ready to support Gusto's growing needs. As we transition to self-hosted distributed databases, the team is focused on reducing blast radius, improving operational resilience, and enabling sustainable scale.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Architect, deploy, and own the full lifecycle of distributed database systems (TiDB) on Kubernetes at scale, ensuring high availability, data consistency, and operational excellence
• Coordinate complex, zero-downtime migrations from monolithic to distributed architectures, including vertical sharding to isolate Product Services
• Define and drive efficiency improvements across the storage infrastructure through query optimization, caching strategies, and workload management
• Define standards and build reliable automation to ensure data consistency, integrity, and security across distributed systems
• Continuously improve operational excellence by reducing on-call burden through sustainable, long-term solutions
• Partner with product engineering teams and technical collaborators to enable rapid and reliable product development
• Mentor engineers across the Datastores Infrastructure team on best practices for operating complex, self-hosted distributed systems, actively developing our collective operational expertise

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 12+ years of software engineering experience building and scaling large-scale infrastructure systems
• Hands-on experience building and operating distributed databases on Kubernetes (strongly preferred: TiDB; alternatively: CockroachDB, Vitess, Citus, or similar solutions)
• Deep expertise in distributed data systems including horizontal sharding, partitioning strategies, and distributed transaction management
• Proven experience coordinating complex, zero-downtime migrations affecting production systems at scale
• 5+ years of AWS experience with RDS, Aurora, caching systems (Redis/ValKey), streaming platforms (Kafka), and infrastructure optimization at scale
• Strong communication skills with the ability to simplify technical complexity and collaborate on technical direction across teams
• Curiosity and ability to operate in an AI-native environment, leveraging AI tooling to enhance infrastructure operations, driving improvements in  query optimization, performance evaluation, and infrastructure automation
• Bonus: Experience with service extraction and vertical sharding from monolithic architectures
• Bonus: Experience working with Ruby on Rails or similar MVC frameworks at scale

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $200,000-$230,000 /yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $230,000-$270,000 /yr for San Francisco, Seattle & New York. 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. 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.