Gusto

Software Engineering Internship Program

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. 

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. 

Start to finish ownership

Our engineers love working on projects from inception to completion.

At Gusto, we have an ownership mentality: every employee has the power to make our company better. Our engineers own projects from end-to-end by influencing initial feature specs, building backend APIs (Rails), writing frontend code (React), and overseeing ongoing improvements for deployed features.

Customer comes first

All of our teams follow a customer-centric approach by embracing a service mindset.

Customers genuinely love our product. Don’t just take our word for it — check out what some of our customers have to say. Our workspace reflects our unwavering dedication to our customers. Our conference room names are inspired by our “Gustomers” (think Hair Salon, Cheese Market, Boba Shop), and we even have an office mural to showcase the many types of business owners we serve. 

While our engineering team doesn’t interact with our customers on a day-to-day basis, we understand that every Gustie directly or indirectly impacts our over 60,000 customers (over 1% of all U.S. businesses!). Eddie Kim, our CTO and co-founder, put it best: “No matter what we’re building, we make sure every line of code has two subjects in mind: the people we work with and the people we serve. They’re the heroes and heroines of the programs we write. And when you instill that kind of spirit into your team, it somehow lights up everything you do.”

Open communication

Share information. Share mistakes. Share victories.

Our leadership team believes that businesses run better when everyone knows what’s going on. We have a bi-monthly all-hands meeting with both offices (via video-conferencing). During these sessions, we celebrate new hires, walk through company financials, and reserve time for company Q&A. We use an app to let team members submit and upvote questions so that the most exciting questions get discussed first. 

When we recently raised funds (a $200M Series D at an approximate $3.8 billion valuation), our CEO Josh held an additional all-hands meeting. He walked us through the pitch deck, who each investor was, and the rationale behind each decision. It’s easy to claim that your company believes in being open and transparent, but it’s another thing entirely when prioritized by the leadership.

Pair programs

Pairing is a core part of the day-to-day for engineers at Gusto.

Our engineering culture is built upon camaraderie and great ideas. We have dedicated pairing stations around the office to onboard new teammates and review code, demo days where we share our latest projects, and quarterly hackathons to dive into and ship new features. 

Our interviews also involve pair-programming, where candidates partner with the interviewer on a practical programming task, often in our codebase. The interview helps us assess how the candidates might collaborate on our team. 

Actively practice inclusion

Our team should reflect the diversity of the businesses we serve. Because at the end of the day, we’re all here for the same reason: to make great work accessible for all.

There are many affinity groups at Gusto including Women with Gusto, Gaystos, Vets of Gusto, and others. We also partner with industry leaders to offer company-wide training about unconscious bias and inclusion and belonging.

We’ve been vocal (#transparency) as a company about increasing our team diversity. Women currently make up 26% of our engineering team, and we remain as ambitious as ever when it comes to our diversity goals.

Committed to personal growth

We have a thoughtful employee development program called GustoFIED, or Gusto Feedback, Impact, Engagement, and Development.

Our bi-annual performance-review is an opportunity to have a very open, honest, and focused discussion on strengths and areas of development. It’s a 360-degree feedback process, which consists of a self-reflection, peer-feedback, and a follow-up 1:1 conversation with your manager. GustoFIED is not just a reflection of previous work - we also use this as a time to look forward and help Gusties develop both professionally and personally.

Our engineers also have a $1,500 annual learning and development budget. Engineers have attended classes or workshops, worked in new parts of our stack, and attended conferences. Many of our engineers have even been featured in media and at technology conferences. At Gusto, personal growth isn’t just something we think about twice a year with GustoFIED — it’s every day.

Rapid growth

Launched in 2012, Gusto created software so entrepreneurs could focus on the things they loved, not figuring out how to pay their employees.

Since then, we’ve expanded our product to help small businesses create communities with HR and empower them to provide benefits like health insurance or 401(k) retirement plans to their teams, and we’re still just getting started!

We plan to hire about 100 engineers over the next year. We’re hiring in San Francisco and Denver, and we’re open to remote work. Check out our CTO’s take on how his role has changed as the team has and continues to grow.

Work/life balance

We have a flexible PTO policy so you can take the time you need to stay sharp and energized.

Everyone on the team is an owner of the business, and we trust everyone to make personal decisions about when to take time off. All full-time employees are also given eight hours of time-off to volunteer or participate in community service per quarter.