Job description
About Gusto
Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of full-service payroll, Gusto offers health insurance, 401(k)s, expert HR, and team management tools. Today, Gusto offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York serve more than 400,000 businesses nationwide.
Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That’s why we’re committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.
What Design is like at Gusto:
Product Design at Gusto is a team of over 70 creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to empower small businesses and their employees. We’re a cross-functional group spanning Design, Research, Service Design, Content, Ops, and Front-end Development, focused on building understanding and empathy for the people who use Gusto.
We don’t get caught up in swim lanes. We work closely with partners in Product, Engineering, Data, and Marketing to design, build, and ship experiences that truly make a difference. We’re passionate about thoughtful, inclusive design, and we believe great experiences can make hard things not only possible—but delightful.
About the team
Core Experiences is a growing platform team focused on building flexible, extensible design solutions for both customers and internal product teams. Our work lays the foundation for Gusto’s user experience, enabling teams to move faster with consistency and clarity.
As a Staff UX Researcher, you’ll lead research strategy across platform teams. You’ll partner with Design and Product to define direction and shape research roadmaps grounded in customer needs. Working across pods, you’ll influence product strategy and ensure we’re delivering cohesive, system-driven experiences.
You’ll also help scale research practices, empowering cross-functional teams to take on research through democratization efforts. As a key partner to Design, Engineering, Data, and PM, you’ll bring strong leadership and uphold a high bar for research quality. This is a high-impact role, ideal for someone excited to lead research at scale and elevate the craft across a platform team.
About the opportunity
You’ll report to Gusto’s Head of UX Research and partner closely with Design, Content Design, Service Design, PMs, Data Science, Legal, Marketing, and Engineering. You’ll lead research throughout the product lifecycle, owning a research roadmap aligned with strategic priorities.
Your insights will help connect business goals with real customer needs—powering decisions that shape products and services for millions of small businesses and their employees. Your work will amplify our customer-centric mindset and help evolve the business and product strategy for Gusto as a whole.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
- Build and maintain a strategic research roadmap in partnership with cross-functional leadership and other stakeholders—spanning both generative and evaluative work
- Work with Data science to ensure we have ‘whys’ for our ‘whats’, be opinionated about how we measure success
- Proactively identify research opportunities across the Core Experiences org
- Spot and connect overlapping UXR efforts across Gusto, leveraging existing or ongoing research, and adding value to existing studies
- Drive generative research that is cross-team, or even cross-org
- Drive research democratization by creating tools, training, and frameworks that enable others to conduct effective, lightweight evaluative research
- Address end-to-end customer journey needs, including platform-specific considerations like mobile, to ensure a holistic understanding of user experiences
- Make research actionable for teams by identifying insights from observations, and how they may influence or impact product decisions
- Craft a compelling story around UXR insights that is easy to digest for stakeholders and product teams
- Evaluate emerging methods and tools, and bring new approaches into the research toolkit
- Participate in team Design Jams and identify where research can influence decisions or should be done in the absence of customer insights
- Partner with Design Ops to shape scalable research practices and operational foundations
- Collaborate with Data Science, Marketing, CX, and Sales to uncover patterns in customer behaviors, attitudes, and opportunities
Here’s what we’re looking for:
- 8+ years leading impactful user research projects, ideally with some experience on a platform team
- Strong mixed-methods research skills—qualitative and quantitative—with experience supporting full customer journeys, from software to service
- Skilled at selecting the right methods for the problem, with a clear understanding of tradeoffs and impact
- Strong opinions, loosely held. Comfortable in healthy debate and focused on alignment and progress
- Thrives in fast-paced, dynamic environments. Proactive and adaptable, with strong stakeholder management skills
- Passionate about Gusto’s mission and driven to improve the lives of small business owners and employees
- Experienced in scaling research through democratization—mentoring others and embedding research into everyday team workflows
- Committed to continuous learning and to growing as a research leader and teammate
The ideal candidate should…
- Have deep knowledge of UX research methods and their application in fast-moving, ambiguous environments
- Have an opinion and desire to utilise AI within your research process, and an openness engaging with it
- Be flexible, detail-oriented, and operate with an intrapreneurial mindset and strong ownership
- Act independently while collaborating confidently—driving clarity and alignment across disciplines
- Champion both research and design, with a holistic view of experience quality
- Show genuine empathy for small business owners and employees, and a desire to serve their needs through thoughtful product development
Bonus points for:
- Experience working on platform teams or systems-related projects
- In-house research experience with emerging technologies
- Background in Human-Centered Design, HCI, Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, or Service Design
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). Our cash compensation range for this role is $139,000/yr to $199,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $179,000/yr to $221,000/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.
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.
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