Head of Design, Employee Experiences

Gusto is looking for a Head of Design, Employee Experiences to lead the team responsible for building great experiences for the employees who get paid and receive benefits through our people platform. We call these employees “Members” and have built the Gusto Wallet app and accompanying online experience so they can manage their pay, benefits, and build their own financial prosperity all in one place. 

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 200,000 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. 

The Employee Experiences team supports our mission by helping employees understand their pay and benefits, so they can plan for the future while taking care of themselves and their loved ones. Previous experience working on consumer facing FinTech products like banking or investing would be a valuable asset in this role, along with a strong working knowledge of iOS and Android patterns. This is a critical strategic role that will directly lead a small team of designers. This team is a startup within a startup — the ideal candidate will be hands-on and happy to shift into maker mode when the team needs it. 

Gusto’s Design team is made up of a talented group of people from different crafts: Product Design, Content Design, Research, Design Systems Engineering, and Design Ops. To succeed in this role, you’ll need to take an inclusive approach to experience design focused on great UX expressed beautifully, and have skills you’ve honed through practice in growing and leading high performing, customer-needs driven Design teams. You’ll also be part of a senior leadership team alongside key partners in Product Management, Engineering, and Data Science. Read more about Design at Gusto. 

Here’s what you’ll do:

• Develop a design vision and language that guides the team on how to create delightful, powerful experiences for Members and their needs
• Collaborate with your peers in Product Management, Engineering, Data Science, Product Marketing, and other cross-functional leaders to define strategies that help Members manage their pay, benefits, and build financial prosperity 
• Balance forward-looking work and a high bar for quality with a bias to action and a desire to bring value to customers early and often
• Empower a small team (currently 3 people) and create a healthy, sustainable culture where they can do excellent work in service of our customers and business by building strong customer empathy
• Partner with the research team to influence research questions and direction that will inform Gusto’s employer product strategy and help connect the dots between experience research, market research, data insights, and business metrics
• Lead workshops and other creative ideation sessions that help teams quickly understand the problem, opportunity, trade offs, and converge towards ways we might solve customer problems and create value
• Support and unblock your team when they need help
• You’ll also take on strategic responsibilities in partnership with one of Gusto’s co-founders on emerging priorities at Gusto like Gusto Embedded Payroll — an exciting new initiative for the company. 
• Contribute to Gusto’s central Design team culture and big rocks as a key leader in Design across the company

Here’s what we're looking for:

Craft expertise in UX Design 

• 8+ years of experience in UX Design or a related practice with a portfolio of work you’ve contributed to directly, with at least 3 of those being in a role where you’ve managed people  
• Ability to speak about quality in tangible, grounded terms, and you know how to use insights — data, research, and business metrics — to drive informed decision making
• Understanding of how UX, visual design, content, research, and front-end development contribute to creating holistic, easy-to-use experiences with tried and tested approaches to get the most value from these practices

Design strategy and vision 

• Experience working with cross-functional peers to identify high impact opportunities and executing on them — you are comfortable with debate and live to unblock teams 
• Demonstrated experience making tradeoffs and able to speak to difficult decisions made on previous projects
• Experience taking a practical and pragmatic approach to defining vision collaboratively and at the right fidelity — and then translate it into actionable next steps

Leadership acumen with proven practices to set people up for success 

• You know when to be directive, when to inspire, and when to get out of the way — you are great at coaching people towards delivering work they’re proud of
• Experience building diverse and inclusive teams and with the ability to establish trust and psychological safety with people, regardless of their experience level or craft
• Adept at working with cross functional partners to identify opportunities to reduce scope, make tradeoffs, sequence or prioritize so your teams can deliver effectively and feel proud of the work they’ve done

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). To learn more about Gusto’s compensation philosophy and benefits offerings please view our Total Rewards Approach page.

Our cash compensation range for this role is $176,000 to $209,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $207,000 to $246,000/yr in San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

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. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [email protected].

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