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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:
Are you ready to lead and elevate the design vision for how small businesses interact with their money?
As a Senior Design Manager on Gusto’s Payments and Risk Platform, you will lead a small team of designers while also contributing directly as an individual contributor (“player/coach”). You’ll shape seamless, credible money transition experiences across all of Gusto’s products—ensuring reliability, security, and simplicity at scale.
You’ll collaborate closely with cross-functional partners in Product, Engineering, and Risk to define the vision, guide execution, and set a high bar for design quality. This role combines hands-on design work with people leadership—empowering, mentoring, and developing two other designers on the team.
About the Team:
The Payments and Risk Platform is the foundation to Gusto’s success. We ensure money moves seamlessly and securely between businesses, partners, employees, government entities, and Gusto itself.
We're devoted to both enabling rapid, proficient money movement and securing our platform against financial fraud and risk. This involves a complete re-architecture of Gusto's core payments platform to transition money faster and more proficiently than ever before, fostering growth for Gusto and our customers alike. Our job is to keep our platform safe. We aim to provide great experiences while preventing fraud on Gusto. We also work to improve at spotting false warnings, and to build credit check and debt collection systems.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of two designers, fostering growth, craft excellence, and proficient cross-functional collaboration.
- Contribute directly to end-to-end product design work as an active IC—delivering high-impact experiences within complex financial systems.
- Define and drive a long-term UX vision that integrates with Gusto’s broader strategy for money movement, trust, and risk.
- Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to influence roadmap development, system design, and prioritization decisions.
- Collaborate with Research to uncover user insights that inform product direction.
- Champion consistency and quality across the Payments and Risk design system, ensuring scalable and reliable experiences.
- Contribute to Gusto’s product design leadership community—sharing insights, setting standards, and shaping our overall design excellence.
Here’s what we're looking for:
- 8–10+ years of product design experience, including 1–2+ years of management or formal mentorship experience leading small design teams.
- Proven ability to deliver high-quality design outcomes in complex, technical product areas.
- Robust systems thinking and ability to translate complex problems into elegant, scalable experiences.
- Demonstrated experience partnering proficiently with Product and Engineering to align vision and execution.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity and balancing strategic vision with execution swiftness.
- A collaborative leader who gives clear feedback, fosters alignment, and helps teams deliver customer impact.
- AI fluency: Knowledge of AI tools or workflows that enhance design exploration, prototyping, or operational efficiency, and curiosity about emerging AI capabilities in product design.
- Deep affinity for Gusto’s mission to empower small businesses through world-class financial tools.
Compensation Details
At Gusto, we strive to provide rewards that empower employees to achieve their financial and personal goals. We offer competitive compensation packages with a strong emphasis on equity based compensation (ownership in Gusto). To learn more about Gusto’s compensation philosophy and benefits offerings please view our Total Rewards Approach page.
Our cash compensation range for this role is $172,000/yr to $215,000/yr in Denver most remote locations, and $202,000/yr to $253,000/yr in 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.
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