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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Software Engineer, Database Infrastructure - **Company:** Gusto - **Location:** San Jose, CA, United States - **Experience:** Expert - **Salary:** $183,000.0 - $200,000.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Databases, Data Infrastructure, Data Stores, Distributed Data Store, Distributed Systems, Amazon DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Model View Controller (MVC), Performance Tuning, Query Optimization, Ruby on Rails, Redis, Software Engineering, Caching, Kubernetes, Infrastructure Automation Frameworks, Apache Kafka, Data Management - **Published:** August 18, 2026 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gusto/jobs/7413644 ## About the Role + 6+ years of software engineering experience building and operating large-scale infrastructure systems, with deep hands-on expertise in streaming infrastructure (Kafka) and/or non-relational datastores (DynamoDB or similar) in production at scale + Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals-partitioning, replication, consistency models, and failure modes-and proven experience coordinating migrations or topology changes in production with minimal disruption + Experience running production infrastructure in the cloud, including caching systems like Redis/ValKey and streaming platforms like Kafka, with a track record of driving infrastructure optimization at scale + Strong communication skills, with the ability to simplify technical complexity and collaborate on technical direction across teams + Curiosity and ability to operate in an AI-native environment, using AI tooling to drive improvements in query optimization, performance evaluation, and infrastructure automation + Bonus: Experience with self-hosted distributed databases on Kubernetes (e.g., TiDB, CockroachDB, Vitess, or Citus), horizontal sharding, or service/vertical extraction from monolithic architectures + Bonus: Experience working with Ruby on Rails or similar MVC frameworks at scale, You are considered to have a disability if you have a physical or mental impairment or medical condition that substantially limits a major life activity, or if you have a history or record of such an impairment or medical condition. Disabilities include, but are not limited to: * Blindness * Deafness * Cancer * Diabetes * Epilepsy * Autism * Cerebral palsy * HIV/AIDS * Schizophrenia * Muscular dystrophy * Bipolar disorder * Major depression * Multiple sclerosis (MS) * Missing limbs or partially missing limbs * Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) * Obsessive compulsive disorder * Impairments requiring the use of a wheelchair * Intellectual disability ## Description We're looking for an experienced infrastructure engineer to help evolve how Gusto stores and accesses data as the company scales. You'll help build a platform that lets engineering teams provision and access new datastores, evaluate and stand up highly available, horizontally scalable storage systems, and continue strengthening the resilience of the databases our product already depends on. This is a high-impact role shaping both the tools and the technology choices behind Gusto's storage layer. About the Team: The Datastores Infrastructure Engineering team designs, builds, and operates the data platforms that power Gusto's product: Kafka, MySQL, Postgres, and Redis. As Gusto grows, we're rethinking how the rest of engineering provisions and accesses storage - building self-service tooling for new datastores, exploring and adopting highly available, horizontally scalable systems, and continuing to reduce blast radius and improve the resilience of the databases we already operate. Here's what you'll do day-to-day: + Build the tooling and platform that let engineering teams provision and access new datastores, and evaluate and pilot highly available, horizontally scalable storage systems to meet Gusto's growing needs + Take ownership of Kafka, from capacity planning and partitioning through performance tuning and reliability at scale, and help stand up and operate new non-relational datastores like DynamoDB + Coordinate migrations and topology changes across the datastore platform (MySQL, Postgres, Redis, Kafka) with minimal disruption to production + Drive efficiency and reliability improvements across the platform through query and consumer optimization, caching strategies, and workload management, backed by strong automation and standards for data consistency, integrity, and security + Participate in on-call and drive long-term, sustainable reductions in operational burden + Partner with product engineering teams to enable rapid, reliable product development, and share knowledge to grow the team's collective operating expertise, Glassdoor Indeed Facebook Built In Colorado News Article Conference or Meetup Company Blog Company Employee Company Website Billboard/Outdoor Ads Are you legally authorized to work in the country where you are applying?* Select... 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