Senior Product Design Manager (Payroll)

Join Gusto, a company dedicated to supporting small businesses. As the Senior Product Design Manager for Payroll, you will lead design for one of Gusto's most critical product areas. You will manage a team of designers, set the UX direction for Payroll, and collaborate with various teams to simplify complex workflows. Your work will have a significant impact on the success of small businesses and their employees.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end design for Payroll, shaping experiences that help small businesses pay their teams properly, on time, and with confidence.
• Define and communicate the long-term UX vision for Payroll, and rally multiple teams around it, while partnering with Product, Engineering, Data, Ops and others to set strategy and roadmaps.
• Manage and grow a team of designers, providing mentorship, clear direction, and hands-on support across the team, while championing the Payroll experience as the foundation of Gusto's broader People Platform.

Requirements

• A genuine bond to Gusto's mission and the needs of small businesses
• Deep systems thinking, with a track record of turning interconnected, complex workflows into experiences that feel simple and intuitive
• Demonstrated ability to assess AI-generated design directions: knowing when to use them, when to override them, and how to raise the quality bar on AI outputs
• 8–10+ years of product design experience, with at least 3 years leading and managing design teams
• Experience setting UX direction across multiple teams and influencing product strategy — not just executing on it
• Experience leading product initiatives where AI or automation is central to the user experience — including how to represent uncertainty, surface errors gracefully, and preserve user agency when automation gets it wrong, particularly in high-stakes contexts
• Clear, direct communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to explain design decisions and influence partners at all levels
• Proven ability to drive alignment across cross-functional partners and represent design in high-stakes, strategic conversations
• Experience leading a team through an AI workflow transition — not just adopting AI personally, but changing how a team works, including establishing new norms and standards
• Experience designing in complex domains i.e. financial products, healthcare, or similarly regulated environments

Pay

USD 172,000 - 279,000