Staff Software Engineer, Payroll Canada at Gusto

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 at Gusto. We 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.

About the Role:

We're hiring a Staff Software Engineer to join Gusto's Payroll Canada team, where you'll help build and scale the payroll experience for Canadian businesses. This is a 0-to-1 opportunity, meaning you'll be building core payroll capabilities for a new market largely from scratch, not just extending an established product. This is primarily a backend role which involves designing and evolving the services and business logic that power Canadian payroll with full-stack components where that logic surfaces to customers via GraphQL. You'll own complex technical problems end-to-end, partner closely with Product and Platform teams, and help bring Gusto's payroll product to a new country.

About the Team:

The Payroll Canada team is building Gusto's payroll product for the Canadian market, from internal (Gusto-on-Gusto) payroll to external customers running payroll for their own employees. We own the backend services and business logic that handle Canadian payroll calculations, compliance, and remittances, and we connect that logic to the frontend through GraphQL. Our work sits at the intersection of backend product engineering and a new, fast-moving market launch, in a highly regulated domain.

Here's what you'll do day-to-day:

Here's what we're looking for: