Sales Engineer

Gusto•San Francisco, NY

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

Gusto is hiring a highly customer-facing Sales Engineer at the intersection of engineering, solution architecture, agentic AI, and customer delivery. The role owns technical discovery for ongoing opportunities and, once a deal is qualified, scopes and builds production solutions in close partnership with clients. The work involves building and embedding compliance-focused agents and multi-agent systems that operate against real tax and jurisdiction data, and delivering measurable customer outcomes such as hours saved, tickets deflected, and reduced risk. Solutions count as successful when they are live and being used by paying clients, rather than remaining prototypes. The Sales Engineer works with technical and executive stakeholders, moving quickly from problem discovery to proof of concept and production-ready implementation. The role includes assessing technical feasibility, defining ambiguous requirements, making the subscription business case, resolving blockers to production, and ensuring client teams can operate the delivered solution independently. The engineer also creates reusable implementation playbooks and feeds insights from sales and build engagements back into product and go-to-market strategy. Gusto has offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City; Symmetry, a Gusto subsidiary, has an office in Scottsdale. 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 role. Approved work from other locations requires a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection. The role requires regular and predictable attendance and responsiveness to teammates, customers, and stakeholders.

Requirements

At least 5 years of hands-on experience in a customer-facing technical role, such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, AI Engineer, Implementation Engineer, Solutions Architect, or Technical Consultant.
Demonstrated track record of shipping production systems in ambiguous, client-facing environments.
Experience with REST APIs, webhooks, event-driven systems, authentication patterns, data modeling, idempotency, and failure modes.
Ability to build production systems in highly regulated categories, with payroll, tax, or compliance fluency sufficient to engage directly with a client's compliance team.
Experience with agentic workflows beyond prototypes, including MCP or function-calling patterns and evaluation and reliability practices.
Strong technical discovery skills and the ability to navigate substantial ambiguity.
Ability to scope technical solutions from ambiguous opportunities, build the business case that justifies a subscription, and ship reusable patterns.
Ability to present to and influence audiences ranging from individual engineers to executive sponsors.
Entrepreneurial approach, passion for Gusto's mission, and empathy for clients whose compliance work is being automated.

Nice To Haves

Experience with the integration surface of a specific HR or payroll platform.
Experience with enterprise procurement or security review processes.
Experience with MEDDPICC-style deal frameworks.

Responsibilities

Provide Sales with early technical feasibility assessments for ambiguous Enterprise opportunities and own compliance-challenge scoping after an opportunity is sales-qualified.
Gather requirements for complex and ambiguous opportunities and define problems clearly enough for Sales, Product, and Engineering to align.
Build working proofs of concept when a deal needs feasibility demonstrated before a full build is approved, tailoring technical explanations to the audience.
Translate deployments into business cases that justify subscriptions, including hours saved, risk reduced, and compliance simplified.
Embed with clients and write production code that runs compliance decisions, adapting the approach to each engagement.
Diagnose and resolve data issues, jurisdiction mapping problems, and tax ID reconciliation blockers that prevent clients from reaching production.
Keep technical teams and business stakeholders aligned as requirements evolve, and communicate scope changes clearly.
Deliver implementations and runbooks that Client Success can operate independently without returning to the Forward Deployed Engineer.
Feed structured insights from sales and implementation work into product and go-to-market strategy, including infrastructure gaps.
Create implementation playbooks, solution patterns, demo flows, and deployment documentation to accelerate future deployments.