Senior Manager, Agentic Strategy & Operations

About the Role:

We are building AI-powered, agentic workflows to transform how service operations scale, resolve customer needs, and maintain quality in high-stakes environments. At Gusto, that means designing systems that can earn the trust of small business owners — where a wrong answer or a missed escalation has real consequences.

As an AI Solutions Architect, you will own the end-to-end design and performance of these workflows in production — where models, tools, data, and human judgment come together to deliver outcomes. This is not a traditional architecture role. You will design, prototype, deploy, and continuously improve AI-driven systems that directly impact customer experience and operational efficiency. You will also play a key role in shaping the evolution of our AI platform by identifying capability gaps, prototyping solutions, and informing the primitives required to scale agentic systems effectively.

You will report into the Service Transformation org and work at the intersection of AI governance, service quality, and operational transformation — operating as the connective tissue between Engineering, CX, Legal, and Compliance as Gus, Gusto's AI assistant, scales.

About the Team:

The mission of our Service Transformation (CXT) team is to quickly evolve and scale how Gusto delivers outstanding service experiences and leverages AI to do so. Our team designs the systems, governance frameworks, and feedback loops that allow Gusto's service model to improve continuously, operate reliably, and earn the trust of the customers and employees who depend on it.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Architect, prototype, and own end-to-end agentic service workflow frameworks, from scoping through production deployment and iteration — including solve and assist targets, HITL protocols, override logic, and downstream quality safeguards
• Analyze SOPs, operational metrics and interaction data to identify and prioritize high-impact automation opportunities based on volume, risk, and customer impact
• Design and implement multi-agent orchestration patterns across tools, data sources, and decision steps within a single end-to-end workflow
• Apply and influence AI platform capabilities in partnership with CoreX (Gusto's AI Platform team) — including orchestration, retrieval, and evaluation — helping define what needs to be built to support production workflows at scale
• Identify platform gaps, prototype workflow-level solutions, and partner with engineering to shape the primitives required for reliable, scalable AI systems
• Serve as the primary CX voice in Legal, Security, Compliance, and CoreX forums — translating CX quality stakes and workflow risk into terms each audience acts on, and ensuring governance requirements are embedded in design, not retrofitted after launch
• Strengthen evaluation frameworks and feedback loops to ensure quality, compliance, and continuous improvement; contribute to Gusto's human evaluation programs and AI governance practices through deep partnership with our internal CX Labs team
• Partner with Data teams to define and track workflow performance — including solve and assist rate, AHT, rework rate, and customer effort score — clearly distinguishing between model-level, workflow-level, and operational drivers
• Build ROI models to quantify workflow impact across efficiency, quality, and cost before and after deployment
• Represent workflow performance and risk to senior stakeholders with appropriate precision and brevity; communicate in a way that drives action, not overwhelm
• Lead through ambiguity and rapid change: the function is still being defined, and you will help define it

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 8+ years in operations, product, or AI roles — with at least 2 years designing and deploying AI-assisted or agentic workflows
• Strong fluency with LLM systems, including prompt design, evaluation, and production behavior at scale
• Hands-on experience with agentic tooling, orchestration frameworks, or MCP-style integrations — conceptual familiarity is not sufficient at this level
• Experience designing human-in-the-loop (HITL) systems with clear escalation logic, override controls, and compliance-aware checkpoints
• Working knowledge of multi-agent systems and tool coordination
• Strong operational judgment: able to define and diagnose workflow metrics 
• Proven track record influencing cross-functional stakeholders — including Product, Engineering, Legal, Security, and Compliance — in writing, in design reviews, and in high-stakes forums
• Familiarity with Responsible AI practices, governance, and risk management in production environments
• Proven ability to operate in high ambiguity, create clarity, and drive alignment across technical and non-technical audiences
• Strong systems thinking with a bias toward execution and measurable outcomes
• Deep empathy for small business customers and the employees who serve them

Our cash compensation amount for this role is $133,470/yr to $173,511/yr in Denver & most major metro locations, and $157,145/yr to $204,289/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.