People Partner - Product and Product Design

Gusto•San Francisco, CA

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

We're looking for a high-ownership People Business Partner to support our Product and Design organizations at Gusto. This role serves as a trusted partner to leaders across some of our most cross-functional, fast-moving teams at Gusto. This role blends high-trust business partnership with hands-on execution. You'll partner with leaders through organizational changes, drive core People programs and operating rhythms, and act as the connective tissue between Product & Design and the broader People team. The leaders you'll support have strong points of view and deep context - you add value by stress-testing their thinking, then making it happen. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable analyzing data to surface a team health trend, running a clean reorg end-to-end, and building a lightweight process that makes a program actually land. This role is designed for someone who operates with high ownership, has a strong bias toward action, and earns trust with follow-through, not slide decks. We're in an active build phase - this role requires someone who arrives ready to construct, not inherit. Gusto's People team is growing and scaling with the company! As our business scales and becomes more complex, and as we add hundreds of new Gusties each year, we need to ensure that our strategies for engagement with our employees are positive, engaging, values-driven and compliant.

Requirements

10+ years of HRBP or People Partner experience, with meaningful time supporting Product Management, Product Design, or similar cross-functional product organizations in a high-growth tech company.
Track record of executing complex People initiatives end-to-end - org changes, performance cycles, talent calibrations - owning the process and outcome, not just the advisory role.
High-Ownership Executor: Blends high-trust business partnership with hands-on execution - earns credibility through follow-through, not decks, and owns the details, dependencies, and timeline without being pushed.
Program Partner and COE Integrator: Acts as the connective tissue between Product Management, Product Design, and the wider People team, staying accountable for outcomes while pulling in the right COE capability - and builds those relationships proactively.
Builder & AI-Native: Builds lightweight, scalable People processes and reaches for AI to do it, without waiting for a perfect framework. Knows when to iterate on what AI gives them and when to keep the human in the loop.
High Judgment, Low Bureaucracy: Applies People principles without creating unnecessary process - assesses risk and nuance quickly, and knows when a situation needs a scalable solution versus a good answer now.
Comfortable Navigating Ambiguity and Driving Transformation: Operates effectively without perfect information, brings structure to complexity, and leads through change - ideally at Gusto-scale or larger.
Comfortable in the Data: Willing to dig into survey results, performance or attrition cuts, or comp tools - bringing a clear read to a leader conversation rather than a referral.

Responsibilities

Build trusted partnerships with Product Management and Product Design leaders - understanding what's happening in their teams, surfacing friction early, and navigating performance management, promotions, leveling, and employee relations matters with good judgment.
Synthesize People data - engagement survey, performance cycles, attrition signals, headcount trends - into clear, actionable reads for Product and Design leaders before they have to ask.
Support and operationalize core talent programs including performance cycles, calibration discussions, promotion processes, and manager enablement.
Reinforce high performance standards, accountability, and clarity around expectations, feedback, and growth across Product Management and Product Design.
Serve as the liaison between Product & Design and Gusto's broader People team (Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, L&D, People Ops), translating company-wide programs into what they mean for product and design orgs - and surfacing that context back to the center.
When org changes are decided, own end-to-end execution - transition planning, communication sequencing, Workday updates, leader enablement, and follow-through until nothing is left unresolved.