Staff Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure

Denver, CO - Hybrid · New York, NY - Hybrid · San Francisco, CA - Hybrid · 8+ years experience · Hybrid · Posted Oct 6, 2026

At a glance

Experience: 8+ years experience
Workplace: Hybrid
Location: Denver, CO - Hybrid · New York, NY - Hybrid · San Francisco, CA - Hybrid

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.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Cloud Infrastructure team, you will build automation and evolve the foundational systems that support Gusto's products.
This code-driven infrastructure role focuses on setting architecture, Infrastructure-as-Code patterns, and operational standards for the engineering organization.
You will have autonomy to lead initiatives such as migrating production applications to a modern AWS multi-account architecture and improving infrastructure reliability.

Build and maintain AWS infrastructure using Terraform/OpenTofu.
Improve the speed, reliability, and usability of Spacelift workflows.
Partner with application and infrastructure teams to migrate production services into a modern AWS multi-account architecture.
Strengthen disaster recovery and compliance readiness by implementing and testing infrastructure resilience.
Refactor infrastructure code into modular, reusable components.
Support engineering teams with cloud infrastructure needs, troubleshooting, and vendor integrations.
Leverage AI-assisted tools to accelerate infrastructure development and identify automation opportunities.
Participate in an on-call rotation focused on internal engineering support.

8+ years of hands-on experience in infrastructure, platform, or site reliability engineering.
Deep, production-level AWS expertise across compute, networking, identity, and security primitives.
Demonstrated mastery of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/OpenTofu strongly preferred).
Experience with multi-account AWS governance including AWS Organizations, OU design, SCPs/RCPs, and federated identity.
Hands-on experience with a managed IaC orchestration platform such as Spacelift or Terraform Cloud.
Experience operating production infrastructure for a customer-facing SaaS platform.
Track record of driving multi-quarter infrastructure initiatives to completion with minimal direction.

Operating Terraform/OpenTofu at large scale (managing thousands of workspaces or state files).
Experience with module registries, versioning strategy, drift detection, and policy-as-code enforcement.
Experience in compliance-regulated environments (SOC 2, PCI, NIST).
Solid cloud networking foundations including VPC design, IP address management, DNS, egress control, and centralized traffic inspection.

Hybrid role with office expectations of 2-3 days per week.
Offices located in Denver, CO; New York, NY; and San Francisco, CA.
Travel to a Gusto office for onboarding is required.
San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas.
Secure, reliable internet connection required for non-office days.