Head of Partner Solutions, Embedded

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 300,000 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. 

About the Team:

Gusto Embedded Payroll is an API based product that enables software developers to embed and customize payroll directly into their software. And it works in any type of platform serving small and medium businesses: vertical SaaS, business operations, fintech, banks, accounting, and more. We’ve taken the infrastructure we’ve built servicing tens of millions of paychecks and tens of thousands of tax codes on Gusto and made it available for external software developers. Our vision is to enable any third party developer to build the best payroll product for their end customers.

About the Role: 

We are seeking a dynamic and experienced Head of Partner Solutions to lead and scale our post-sales partner-facing teams, including Technical Solutions, Program Management, and Customer Experience (CX). This is a senior leadership role responsible for helping GEP’s partners build, launch, and service the best payroll product possible for their end customers. This role will be pivotal in improving time-to-launch, scaling operational efficiencies, and ensuring impeccable service delivery for our partners building embedded payroll solutions. You will collaborate closely with internal teams—Engineering, Product, Growth, Risk, Legal & Compliance —to drive partner success throughout their lifecycle. We operate like a startup—candidates who prefer a rapid pace of change and a nascent, fast moving market landscape will feel at home. You’ll be directly empowered by our GM of Gusto Embedded Payroll.

Key Responsibilities:

• Strategic Leadership: Drive the success of the Technical Solutions, Program Management, and CX teams by building operational frameworks and best-in-class processes.
• Technical Empowerment: Work closely with the Technical Solutions team to ensure the end-to-end technical success of partners building on our embedded payroll platform.
• Partner Program Management: Oversee the Program Management team to manage and streamline cross-functional initiatives and workstreams for large scale complex partner implementations.
• Customer Support Excellence: Guide the CX team to train & enable partner CX teams, deliver Tier 2 support, and maintain high standards of payroll service for our partners’ end customers.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Act as the primary liaison with internal teams (especially engineering, product, and design) to advocate for partner needs, resolve escalations, and ensure alignment across all stages of the partner lifecycle.
• Operational Scaling: Develop and execute strategies to scale operations, implement tiered staffing models, and introduce efficiency measures to support rapid growth.

Ideal Attributes

• Technical Expertise: Deep experience working with developer-facing API products and collaborating with engineering & product teams to drive systematic improvements.
• Complex Implementation Experience: Proven track record in managing long-cycle implementations (weeks to months) of technical, enterprise-grade products.
• Enterprise Partnership Acumen: Expertise in managing demanding B2B enterprise SaaS clients, including C-level relationships, escalations, and strategic negotiations.
• Operational Excellence: Experience in scaling support teams, introducing operational efficiencies, and driving structured processes at a rapidly growing organization.
• Builder Mindset: Independent problem-solver with a knack for creating frameworks and scalable models, balancing strategic vision with tactical execution. You are excited by the combination of working deeply with individual partners and building for scale (have worked at both startups and larger companies)
• Leadership and Communication:
  • Invests in team growth at both individual and organizational levels.
  • Strong relationship-building skills with internal and external stakeholders.
  • Clear and effective verbal and written communication.
  • Bias toward action and a proven track record of execution.

Experience Required

• 12-15+ years of experience, with at least 7+ years in senior leadership roles managing multiple teams.
• Demonstrated success leading post-sales technical solutions, program management, and operations teams.
• Background in enterprise B2B SaaS companies with complex technical products, ideally developer APIs or similar infrastructure and payments technologies.
• Proven ability to improve launch timelines and operational processes for partners.
• Payroll experience is a plus but not required.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $207,000 -$235,000 /yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $243,000 - $275,000 /yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.