Senior Product Design Lead, Payments & Risk Platform

Denver, CO; San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA; Seattle, WA; Toronto, Ontario, CAN - Remote About Gusto At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff—like payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR—so owners can focus on their craft and customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we’re proud to support more than 400,000 small businesses across the country, and we’re building a workplace that represents and celebrates the customers we serve. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy. About the Role: Are you ready to elevate the design vision for how small businesses interact with their money? As the Payments + Risk Design Lead, you’ll own end-to-end product design for some of the most complex and mission-critical systems at Gusto. This is a senior individual contributor role that blends deep hands-on design craft with cross-functional leadership. You’ll serve as a design leader alongside two other designers on the Payments + Risk team, helping elevate craft, drive alignment, and mentor teammates through mindful feedback and proficient collaboration. You combine systems thinking with remarkable UX and visual design skills, enabling you to craft scalable patterns, explore new interaction models, and raise the overall quality of our product experiences. You’ll shape seamless and credible money-movement experiences across Gusto’s products—ensuring reliability, security, and simplicity at scale. About the Team: The Payments and Risk Platform is the foundation of Gusto’s success. We ensure money moves seamlessly and securely between businesses, partners, employees, government entities, and Gusto itself. We enable rapid and proficient money movement while protecting our platform from financial risk. Our work spans re-architecting Gusto’s core payment systems, reducing false positives in fraud detection, and building credit and debt-collection systems. Our mandate: enable fast reliable payment flows and protect the platform all while delivering great experiences at scale. Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Design end-to-end product experiences across complex financial workflows as a hands-on senior IC.
• Define and drive the long-term UX vision for Payments + Risk aligned with Gusto’s strategy for money movement trust and risk.
• Lead design strategy within your focus area partnering closely with Product Engineering and Risk to create alignment and clarity.
• Elevate the visual and interaction design quality of Payments + Risk experiences ensuring clarity polish and usability.
• Explore and define new UX/UI patterns for sophisticated workflows—especially where no patterns currently exist.
• Evolve and maintain the design system shaping scalable components and interaction models that support critical customer journeys.
• Influence product and technical roadmaps by advocating for customer needs design quality and long-term system health.
• Collaborate with Research to uncover and interpret user insights that inform product direction and UX strategy.
• Mentor other designers through feedback pairing and shared problem-solving helping raise the overall craft bar.
• Contribute to Gusto’s design leadership community shaping standards processes and design excellence across the organization.

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 8–10+ years of product design experience including time spent in complex technical or large-scale product domains.
• A portfolio demonstrating extraordinary UX and visual design craft with high-quality polished product work.
• Proven ability to lead design direction drive alignment & influence cross-functional partners.
• Experience designing for deeply technical systems financial workflows or other complex problem spaces.
• Expertise in systems thinking with ability to translate complexity into clear elegant scalable experiences.
• Experience contributing to or evolving a design system—components patterns interaction models & visual standards.
• Ability to define net-new patterns & interaction models in ambiguous or emerging product areas.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity while balancing long-term vision with rapid iteration & execution.
• AI fluency—knowledge of tools & workflows that enhance exploration prototyping or operational efficiency.
• A deep affinity for Gusto’s mission to empower small businesses through modern credible financial tools.

Compensation Details

At Gusto we strive to provide rewards that empower employees to achieve their financial & personal goals We offer competitive compensation packages with strong emphasis on equity based compensation (ownership in Gusto) To learn more about Gusto’s compensation philosophy & benefits offerings please view our Total Rewards Approach page. Our cash compensation range for this role is $172K/yr to $215K/yr in Denver & most remote locations $202K/yr to $253K/yr in San Francisco Seattle & New York Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience & expertise & may vary from amounts listed above. Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver San Francisco & New York City Employees based in those locations expected to work from office approximately 2–3 days per week (or more depending on role) Same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles (Gusto's subsidiary) whose physical office is Scottsdale. Note San Francisco office expectations encompass both San Francisco & San Jose metro areas. When approved to work from location other than Gusto office secure reliable consistent internet connection required including non-office days for hybrid employees. Our customers come from all walks life so do we We hire great people from wide variety backgrounds not just because right thing but because it makes company stronger If you share values enthusiasm for small businesses you will find home at Gusto. Gusto is proud equal opportunity employer We do not discriminate hiring or any employment decision based on race color religion national origin age sex (including pregnancy childbirth related medical conditions) marital status ancestry physical or mental disability genetic information veteran status gender identity expression sexual orientation or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories consistent with applicable federal state local law. Gusto committed providing reasonable accommodations qualified individuals disabilities disabled veterans job application procedures We want see candidates perform best ability If require medical religious accommodation any time throughout candidate journey please fill out form member team will get in touch. Gusto takes security protection personal information very seriously Please review Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer. Personal information collected processed part your Gusto application subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.