Head of Design (Unified Service Platform)

Join Gusto, a mission-driven company dedicated to empowering small businesses and their employees. As the Head of Design for our Unified Service Platform, you will lead a small team of designers, set the design direction and quality, and represent design in cross-functional discussions. This is a hands-on role where you will also contribute to the highest-leverage design work. You will be at the forefront of defining AI-native service design and shaping the future of our platform.

• Lead, coach, and grow a small, high-caliber team of designers, ensuring their development, performance, and craft growth.
• Own design direction and quality across the Unified Service Platform, setting the vision and the bar for design excellence.
• Represent design on the USP quartet, co-leading product direction with PM, Engineering, and Data leaders, and driving convergence.
• Hands-on AI fluency — you use AI-native tools yourself and can raise your team's fluency; you perceive AI as part of the craft, not separate from it
• Service design depth — real journey mapping and blueprinting on two-sided products with operational handoffs, not workshop exercises
• Experience managing and growing product designers — you've led a team, developed designers, run performance and growth, and built a healthy team culture. Managing across disciplines (e.g., content/conversation design alongside product design) is a well-developed plus
• Design leadership in ambiguity — you set direction and a high craft bar, co-own strategy with cross-functional peers, and hold a position when the right answer is unpopular
• AI-product judgment in consequential domains — you've shipped (or led teams that shipped) AI-mediated experiences in production, and can speak to uncertainty, errors, graceful failure, and human override
• 12+ years of design experience, including 5+ years managing designers, with clear ownership of shipped work in a B2B SaaS environment