Senior Staff Product Designer, Onboarding

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 400,000 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.

About the Role:

As a Senior Staff Product Designer focused on Onboarding, you’ll lead design to craft an onboarding experience that meets the needs of Gusto’s diverse customers from day one. You’ll design streamlined, personalized onboarding flows that help small business owners and their teams quickly understand, set up, and unlock value from our multi-product platform. This is a critical moment in the customer lifecycle—and you’ll play a key role in shaping how we meet customers where they are, no matter their background, goals, or device.

You’ll partner with cross-functional peers in Product, Engineering, Research, Data Science, and Marketing to ensure a cohesive and seamless onboarding experience across channels and touchpoints. You’ll leverage your depth in UX, systems thinking, service design, and responsive design—along with a strong orientation toward business outcomes—to make getting started with Gusto as effortless and empowering as possible.

About the Team:

The Growth team at Gusto is responsible for the entire customer funnel—from the moment someone learns about Gusto, to deciding to use it, to onboarding and setup, all the way through to helping existing customers discover, adopt, and engage with the right products over time. Our work is rooted in a user-centric, value-led approach to growth—prioritizing trust, clarity, and impact at every stage. As a key contributor, you’ll collaborate closely with Engineers, Product Managers, Data Scientists, and strategic partners across Marketing and the business, working together to shape critical moments across the customer journey.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Design a personalized onboarding experience: Create a seamless and intuitive onboarding process tailored to customer needs, ensuring people can quickly understand, set up, and gain value from our products.
• Collaborate across journeys and platforms: Work with Growth, Core Experiences, Sales, and Marketing partners to create an integrated experience across desktop and mobile web. Native mobile familiarity is a plus.
• Map complex workflows: Simplify and orchestrate interconnected setup tasks across multiple products, ensuring customers feel confident and supported along the way.
• Optimize the journey: Use A/B testing, customer research, behavioral analytics, and qualitative insights to refine onboarding strategies, improving conversion rates and time-to-value.
• Design at scale: Use and contribute to our design system to build scalable components and patterns that support consistency and efficiency.
• Holistic service design: Design with marketing, sales, and customer support needs in mind so you can deliver a cohesive and logical flow from first contact to activation.
• Champion quality and accessibility: Ensure that every onboarding touchpoint is accessible, inclusive, and thoughtfully crafted for diverse user needs.

Commitment to craft: Maintain a high standard of excellence in UX, systems-thinking, service design, and content design, ensuring all solutions are both functional and elegant.

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 10+ years of experience in end-to-end product design, with a deep focus on onboarding and setup workflows within B2B and multi-product SaaS environments.
• Expertise in mobile responsive design, with a strong portfolio of web-first solutions; native mobile design experience is a plus.
• Expertise in mapping and simplifying complex workflows, considering various touchpoints across devices, channels, and organizational roles.
• Deep understanding of B2B customer personas, including decision-makers, administrators, and end-users, with the ability to design for their unique goals and workflows.
• Proficiency in content design, crafting clear, concise, and actionable in-product copy to support user success.
• Analytical and research-driven, using a mix of qualitative insights, user research, and behavioral data to inform strategies, prioritize decisions, and optimize the journey.
• Experience with service design, with awareness of how onboarding connects to adjacent touchpoints such as email, chat, sales, and support.
• Experience with design systems, ensuring scalable and consistent design patterns.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, with a proven ability to co-lead product strategy and articulate contributions to the product direction.
• Track record of iterative impact and long-term vision development, achieving UX milestones from initial value to north star objectives.
• Track record of mentoring and coaching other designers.

Nice to haves:

• Experience working on onboarding for financial, HR, or workflow-heavy tools.
• Experience partnering with Marketing teams on campaign-led or lifecycle-aware onboarding efforts.
• Native mobile design experience.

Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale.

Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas.

When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required.

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. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.

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