About Gusto
At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve.
All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.
AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.
About the Role:
Gusto is looking for a Senior Talent Development Leader to treat our highest-stakes talent systems as evolving products. This role requires a product-management lens, balancing long-term product strategy with rigorous product operations. On one side, you will own the product roadmap and lifecycle for Gusto's high-potential talent acceleration and executive development offerings, ensuring these products deliver a distinct and additive value proposition for our most promising leaders. On the other, you will own the end-to-end product health and user experience of our Quarterly Performance Review cycle. This means managing the strategic operating plan, the technical partnerships, and the cross-functional coordination required to ensure the performance process is a seamless, impactful experience for every Gustie and People Empowerer.
These two focus areas form a cohesive talent ecosystem: talent acceleration products rely on the high-fidelity signals surfaced by a trustworthy performance evaluation product. Conversely, a well-run review cycle serves as the primary discovery engine for future leadership potential. In this role, you will hold ownership over a robust portfolio of critical offerings, driving continuous definition and improvement on each to ensure they complement one another within a unified talent ecosystem. AI is integrated into your product management approach, not as an add-on, but as a core lever for automating mechanics and surfacing readiness signals with greater precision. You will determine where AI leads the experience and where human intervention remains critical, evolving these products as the tools and the business change.
About the Team:
The Talent Development team acts as a strategic partner to the business, diagnosing capability needs and architecting systems that empower employees to build their best careers. We move beyond traditional programs to design the organizational conditions that create clarity, connection, and commitment. By partnering with HR and business leaders, we align learning directly to organizational strategy, using AI and design to embed development into the flow of work.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
- High-Potential Talent Product Strategy: Define and own the end-to-end product lifecycle for our high-potential talent acceleration offering. Define the product roadmap, user value proposition, and inclusion criteria in partnership with Gusto executive leaders, People Partners, and business unit leaders, ensuring the product is positioned as an acceleration engine rather than remediation.
- Product Delivery & Facilitation: Lead the end-to-end delivery of these offerings. Partner with executive leaders to design, launch, and execute the high-potential talent strategy. You are responsible for ensuring the "user experience" of these programs is seamless and delivers measurable acceleration outcomes.
- Executive Development Product: Act as the product owner for our executive development portfolio, including third-party coaching partnerships. Manage the roadmap, utilization, and impact of these offerings, collaborating with executive stakeholders to ensure our executive coaching products remain high-impact and scalable.
- Performance Review Product Strategy: Treat the quarterly performance review process as a high-stakes internal product, defining the roadmap for process evolution, user experience goals, and efficiency metrics. Ensure the cycle consistently delivers meaningful development and assessment outcomes across the organization.
- Product Operations & Lifecycle Management: Manage the end-to-end delivery of the performance cycle—from planning and readiness tracking to final calibration. Own the operational calendar and product milestones, ensuring each launch, progression, and close is seamless and predictable for all users (People Empowerers and Gusties).
- Product Experience & Communications: Act as the product owner for the user experience of the performance cycle. Lead the communication strategy and stakeholder engagement, ensuring clear messaging, alignment with People Partners, and effective escalation pathways. Design the experience to minimize friction and maximize clarity.
- Feedback Loops & Product Iteration: Own the product health and continuous improvement loop. Synthesize qualitative and quantitative feedback to drive iterative improvements. Partner with People Tech to define tooling requirements, prioritizing design and tooling fixes over manual process work to create a more scalable, automated, and impactful performance product.
Here’s what we're looking for:
- You've run a high stakes talent process for a whole company and you know the difference between a process that merely completes and one people trust.
- You can design a program from a blank page (high-potential talent criteria, cohort structure, a coaching partnership) and you can also execute a recurring operational plan with zero dropped threads. Most people are better at one of these. We need both.
- You're the go-to expert PEs, People Partners, and executives trust on high-stakes talent process questions, and you resolve root causes by shaping the standards and systems others follow.
- You already think about where AI can take manual work off a process like this, not as a future idea but as something you'd start doing in your first quarter.
- You build relationships with People Partners and business leaders easily, because most of this role's real work happens through them, not around them.
- Typically 12+ years of relevant experience (or 8+ with an advanced degree) in talent development, talent management, or HR programs, including designing and running enterprise-wide talent processes
Our cash compensation amount for this role is $150,640/yr to $1185,789/yr in Denver & most major metro locations, and $177,020/yr to $218,325/yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.
At Gusto, we don't use titles the traditional way, as a signal of rank or hierarchy. Instead, our titles describe two things at once — your craft (what you do, e.g. Engineering, Design) and your scope of ownership (what you're accountable for) — which is why you'll see something like "Head of X" instead of a rank word like "Director" that tells you neither. Because of this, the title on this posting may look different from what you'd expect based on the scope and seniority of the role, and from how similar roles are typically titled elsewhere. If you have questions about how this role compares to your current title or level, your recruiter can help translate.
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. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.
Reliable, consistent presence: We expect regular and predictable attendance, whether you're working in-office, hybrid, or fully remote, so that you stay closely connected to your team, customers, and stakeholders in real time and ensure colleagues and customers receive the timely support and responsiveness they deserve.
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.
Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer.
Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.
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