Principal Product Manager, HR Experiences

Gusto, Inc.•New York, NY

4h•$179,000 - $260,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Gusto is hiring a Principal Product Manager as a senior individual contributor to own the People Page experience, set experience direction for the HR Suite, and own the Training vertical end to end. The HR Experiences team builds products that help small businesses hire, onboard, develop employees, and stay compliant, as well as tools for HR Partners. The role will help transform the suite from prescribed, GUI-based workflows into AI-native experiences that deliver expert judgment and complete work for customers. The role will define experience principles and interactive patterns across hiring, onboarding, performance, and training, partnering with the PMs who own those verticals. Training will serve as a place to build, ship, and learn quickly before successful patterns extend to other areas. The role will pursue customer outcomes and adoption rather than feature counts, and help customers receive relevant context, confident and compliant recommendations, and completed work tailored to their needs. The PM will collaborate with design, engineering, data, compliance, legal, product marketing, product peers, and advisory teams, and regularly spend time with SMB HR operators. They will build and test AI prototypes, work with engineering to bring them to production, instrument outcomes, and iterate based on customer behavior. They will also help HR Suite experiences work through Claude, ChatGPT, and other assistants using MCP and integrations, in partnership with the PM responsible for the action catalog. Gusto has offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees based in those locations are expected to work from the office on designated days approximately two to three days per week, or more depending on the role. When approved to work elsewhere, employees need a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection. The company expects regular and predictable attendance and responsiveness.

Requirements

At least 8 years of direct Product Management experience.
Track record of owning a significant product surface end to end and shipping products that moved the business.
Real HR domain experience as a People/HR leader or founder who made these decisions firsthand, or experience building products in HR, people, or compliance.
Understanding of how an SMB HR operator thinks.
Fluency in AI product patterns, including conversational and agentic interfaces, interaction patterns beyond chat, LLM capabilities and limitations, and designing trustworthy experiences.
Experience shipping products where AI does the work rather than guiding users through a workflow, or clear motivation to do so.
Ability to build working prototypes independently using AI tools.
Strong point of view on the direction of HR software and judgment to distinguish meaningful opportunities from distractions.
Ability to set multi-year direction while working through shipping-feature details and bringing products to a competitive baseline before extending them.
Comfort with ambiguity and complexity, particularly in experience design and product formulation.
Ability to address compliance, privacy, and multi-tenant trust as product design constraints.
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including making persuasive arguments, rallying teams, and engaging skeptical stakeholders.
Customer-focused judgment and discipline to validate product decisions with real users.

Nice To Haves

Experience in HR, compliance, fintech, or another high-trust regulated domain.
Experience reimagining a mature, workflow-heavy product for AI.
Experience converting an expert services motion into scaled software.

Responsibilities

Own the People Page experience, including its entry points, interactive patterns, and experience principles across the HR Suite.
Set experience direction for hiring, onboarding, performance, and training in partnership with the PMs who own those verticals.
Own the Training vertical end to end and use it to build, ship, and learn from new product patterns.
Move HR experiences toward AI-native products that provide tailored, compliant recommendations and do work for customers.
Measure adoption and customer outcomes rather than feature counts.
Collaborate with design, engineering, data, compliance, legal, product marketing, product peers, HR Partners, and Ask an Expert advisory teams.
Regularly engage with SMB HR operators and validate product decisions with real users.
Build AI-enabled prototypes, partner with engineering to take them to production, instrument outcomes, and iterate based on customer behavior.
Choose and ship interactive patterns suited to each customer job, including conversational, embedded, or agentic experiences where they provide greater value than prescribed workflows.
Help HR Suite appear in assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT through MCP and integrations, partnering with the PM who owns the action catalog.