Product Counsel - HR Apps/Employment Law

Gusto•San Francisco, NY

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a detail-oriented and proactive attorney who wants to apply their employment law and product counseling expertise to help build compliant, scalable HR products for small businesses. This is a unique opportunity to serve as the embedded legal partner for Gusto's HR Apps portfolio—a broad and growing suite of products spanning employee handbooks, compliance guidance and templates, hiring, onboarding, and beyond. In this role, you will provide day-to-day legal support to our HR Apps product and engineering teams, with a focus on building out a suite of compliance products that make a real difference for small businesses and their employees. We're looking for a creative attorney who brings a builder's mentality and a genuine "find a way forward" approach to complex legal and product challenges. If you want to use technology and teamwork to build compliance solutions for small businesses, this role might be a great fit for you. Success in this role requires strong organizational skills, a process-oriented mindset, and the ability to manage a high volume of requests across a diverse product portfolio. Attorneys are expected to use AI tools in everyday work to accelerate research and processes, synthesize insights, and refine positioning and content with speed and precision, while maintaining accuracy and consistency with legal best practices. Gusto's Legal & Compliance team partners with product and engineering teams to enable innovation, facilitate responsible company growth, accelerate the Gusto roadmap, and provide compliant products to our customers through solution-focused counsel on legal and business risks. We are passionate about using groundbreaking technology and excellent service to elevate the experience of small business owners and their employees. Each team member takes real ownership of their work and makes a meaningful impact every day.

Requirements

5+ years of legal experience, ideally including in-house experience at a technology company.
Experience must include a deep understanding of employment law and litigation.
Product counseling experience is strongly preferred—but candidates who bring a builder's mindset and a demonstrated ability to quickly develop expertise in new legal domains are encouraged to apply even without direct product counseling experience.
Deep experience providing pragmatic legal guidance on employment obligations and building durable compliance resources.
Experience using AI tools to deliver efficiency in your individual work and as essential components in the processes you develop and improve.
Demonstrated ability to build consensus and strong working relationships.
A collaborative, solution-oriented mindset with a focus on progress and teamwork (no job is too big or too small).
An eagerness to dive in, take ownership of projects, and manage work with accountability, while ensuring appropriate visibility and smooth escalation to senior counsel or other decision-makers.
JD degree and membership in a State bar with a current license to practice law.

Responsibilities

Provide tactical legal support to HR Apps product, engineering, and operations teams for a broad portfolio of HR products, including handbooks, labor law posters, hiring, onboarding, leaves of absence, I-9, regulatory reporting, background checks, learning management, performance, and offboarding.
Review product requirements and identify compliance and regulatory risks early in the development process, during product iteration, and throughout the product lifecycle.
Identify, prioritize, and develop HR Apps-related compliance artifacts to seed Gusto's compliance rules engine and maintain the Legal “Single Source of Truth” compliance hub.
Build processes, resources, and tooling—including AI-driven workflows, self-help checklists, playbooks, and structured frameworks for R&D requests (e.g., via JIRA and/or Notion)—that drive efficiency, standardize review workflows, and reduce risk across the product development lifecycle.
Research regulatory areas impacting HR Apps offerings; proactively monitor regulatory developments and legislative changes to assess product impact and identify needed updates.
Help resolve day-to-day customer escalations and operational legal questions related to HR Apps products.
Support vendor review and onboarding, partner integrations, and GTM communications, terms drafting, and revision.