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# Staff Software Engineer, Platform Orchestration

- **Company:** GUSTO PLATFORM
- **Location:** San Jose, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $163,000.0 - $204,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Ruby, TypeScript, Delivery Pipeline, Reliability of Systems, Build Management, Kubernetes, Golang, Programming Languages
- **Published:** May 19, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.dice.com/job-detail/5fba32bb-d88c-4358-9a0a-db963a4c92f2

## About the Role

* 10+ years of experience with modern programming languages, ideally Golang, Ruby, and/or TypeScript
 * 5+ years of experience with Kubernetes, ideally using Crossplane to manage Infrastructure as Code
 * Hands-on experience with AI-agent coding tools (Claude Code or similar) and demonstrated ability to design tooling for agentic consumption - MCPs, structured CLIs, documented tool contracts - beyond using AI as a chat companion
 * Strong work ethic and self-starter who finds a way to operate effectively amidst ambiguity
 * Systems-thinking approach to complex systems; identifies small changes that create big impact
 * Resilient problem solver capable of prioritizing work that serves both immediate peers and the entire Gusto customer base
 * Effective communicator who can simplify complex topics and communicate persuasive ideas

## Description

Gusto's Platform Orchestration team is rebuilding how engineers ship at Gusto - turning operational toil into a product-grade self-service platform that AI agents can drive end-to-end. We sit at the intersection of Infrastructure Engineering, Developer Productivity, Security, and Product Engineering, and we enable self-service infrastructure capabilities through a Backstage-based Developer Portal and a Crossplane-based Platform Orchestrator. We automate as much as possible - safe rollouts of infrastructure and application changes, approval-based workflows, and the exposure of our entire toolchain to AI agents. We're embarking on a multi-year strategic effort to shift operational tasks into a product-driven platform so the broader Infrastructure group can focus on the future state of our systems.

Here's what you'll do day-to-day:

 * Design and implement an internal platform for engineers to build and deploy production-grade systems in a self-service manner
 * Establish standards and build deterministic automation while optimizing for user accessibility and system reliability
 * Collaborate with Infrastructure, Developer Productivity, and Security teams to deliver capabilities that delight our internal users
 * Build the AI-agent surface for our platform - MCPs, Claude skills, and structured tool catalogs that let agents drive infrastructure and deployment workflows safely on behalf of internal users
 * Iterate on the internal-platform UX with the same product instincts you'd apply to a customer-facing product - measure adoption, listen for friction, and ship improvements
 * Drive paved-road-vs-exception decisions: when to harden a self-service path, when to make a one-off accommodation, and when to redirect to a different supported workflow
 * Participate in an on-call rotation supporting the deployment of platform services and the management of underlying infrastructure


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