Software Engineering Apprenticeship (Summer 2026)

at Gusto

San Francisco, CA; New York, NY

Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of a 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 500,000 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. 

We’re launching a 6-month, full-time, paid Software Engineering Apprenticeship based in New York City or San Francisco for creative problem solvers early in their software journey. This program is designed for people who learn best by doing — building real products alongside experienced engineers in a highly supportive, hands-on environment.

As an apprentice, you’ll spend much of your time pairing with teammates, asking thoughtful questions, and gradually taking ownership of meaningful work. With close mentorship and structured support, you’ll develop strong engineering fundamentals while gaining confidence and autonomy over time.

This apprenticeship focuses on how you think, how you learn, and how you grow, rather than credentials, prior titles, or traditional career paths. If you’re excited to build, collaborate, and develop as an engineer while making a real impact, this program is for you.

Our engineers work on both customer-facing and internal employee products, developing features and iterating across our platform to bring delightful experiences to our customers, aiding them in driving their business to be successful. You’ll close your laptop at the end of every day knowing your work is making a difference for hundreds of thousands of small businesses and their employees.. If you’re ready to hone your Software Engineering skills while creating software with far-reaching effects on our modern economy, we’d love for you to join Gusto this summer!

• Learn by doing: pair daily with engineers to design, code, test, and ship features safely and incrementally.
• Explain your thinking: talk through tradeoffs, ask clarifying questions, and make your reasoning visible in daily conversations, PRs, and design reviews.
• Practice feedback as a skill: give and receive actionable feedback, and iterate quickly with your mentor and teammates.
• Build breadth and depth: rotate pairing partners and tasks to expand your toolkit across frontend, backend, and tests.
• Grow your independence: progress from observer to driver to navigator with support, celebrating steady, compounding wins.
• Share outcomes: demo your work and reflect on what you learned as you move toward L1 readiness.

• Creative thinkers who can frame a problem, test an approach, and explain their reasoning clearly.
• Curiosity and humility — you seek feedback, change your mind with new evidence, and keep going when it’s hard.
• Strong communication in a collaborative, pair‑heavy environment; you make teammates better.
• Evidence of learning and making — of any kind: you create things and can show your process (e.g., music, art, writing, community projects, physical builds, software experiments, or other self‑directed work).
• Comfort with the basics in at least one programming language and eagerness to learn the rest on the job.
• No specific degree or prior professional SWE experience is required.

• Our Engineering Culture and Values
• How We Built a Service-Driven Team
• Our Diversity Goals and Efforts

Our cash compensation for this role is $48.08 for candidates based in San Francisco and New York City. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including relevant skills, prior experience, and demonstrated impact, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

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. If you require assistance in filling out a Gusto job application, please reach out to [email protected].