Lead AV Engineer

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 an AV Engineer to be the design authority for audiovisual technology across our entire physical footprint — and the technical director behind every event we put on. This is a senior individual contributor role with real ownership: you'll author the AV standard that every site and every integrator builds against, own the multi-site capital roadmap, and design and direct the productions our executives and customers see. You'll also serve as technical lead on our company-wide migration from Zoom to Google Meet, resetting a fleet of 200+ conference rooms in the process. If you've spent your career executing someone else's drawings and are ready to own the drawing, this is that role.

About the Team

As a member of the AV Engineering team, you'll sit within AIT Operations alongside the AIT Geeks, Inventory, Corporate Identity Engineering, Product AIT and Collaboration Tools. We're a small, high-trust team that owns the technology Gusties touch every day, and we're AI-forward — with a governed platform that gives engineers tools like Claude and Claude Code to automate the repetitive parts of the job. AV is the most visible surface we own: when a room works or an all-hands delivers, people notice. You'll be the senior-most AV technical voice in the company and the SME for our AV platforms, partnering closely with Workplace, Networking, Client Platform Engineering, Brand, and Executive Operations.

Here's what you'll do day-to-day

• Own AV design and programming — design, testing, troubleshooting, implementation of AV technology in Gusto's offices, meeting spaces, and all hands event spaces across San Francisco, Denver, New York, Burlingame, and Scottsdale, with new sites in planning. Integrators move to install, labor, and specialist overflow rather than design lead.

• Author and maintain the Gusto AV standard — room tiers, signal flow, control systems, camera and lighting standards, and the event production baseline that every site and vendor builds against.

• Architect and own the technology and production for all of Gusto's high-profile events — company-wide meetings (remote and in person), our flagship multi-day customer event, fireside chats, onsites, and podcast productions. You set the production design, spec and build the technical package, direct the show, and own the failure modes.

• Lead the AV workstream of our Zoom to Google Meet migration — room interoperability, native Meet conversions, room hardware strategy, identity and policy mapping, and downstream integration dependencies.

• Own the multi-site AV capital roadmap and vendor relationships, including vendor and project management of office buildouts and upgrades, negotiating investment and tradeoffs across sites and holding integrators and manufacturers accountable to design intent.

• Administer our AV SaaS offerings — Google Meet and Zoom room fleets, Logitech and Neat endpoints, and streaming and event platforms — including room health monitoring, dashboards, and firmware lifecycle.

• Act as the escalation path for the IT Geeks Support team for meeting space technology and events, and stay current with AV technology to ensure Gusto's business needs are being met.

• Use AI to automate the work that shouldn't be manual — room health reporting, standards and runbook documentation, show-control logic, and vendor and RFP analysis. We expect you to build tooling, not just maintain spreadsheets.

• Coach the team. Enable our IT Geeks team and event technicians to own tier-one AV and day-of production, support in-house video production projects, and document your domains so neither is a single point of failure.

Here's what we're looking for

• 8+ years of AV engineering experience, including time as the senior-most or design-owning AV resource for a multi-site organization. You've produced designs of record — room tiers, signal flow, rack elevations, control narratives — not just reviewed an integrator's drawings.

• Demonstrated technical direction of high-stakes live events. You've designed and called executive-fronted or external-facing shows end to end, including the failover plan for when something breaks mid-show.

• Deep hands-on control, audio, and video systems expertise: AV control system programming (QSC strongly preferred; experience with Crestron, Biamp, and Extron a bonus), video switching and production (Barco E2, Ross Ultrix, Blackmagic ATEM), audio routing over IP networks such as Dante, comfort on an audio board with at least 16 channels including microphone systems and the ability to tune a room, theatrical and architectural lighting systems and fixtures (ETC, Paradigm, Martin, Chroma Q), and DMX networking.

• Meeting-space and streaming platform depth: advanced knowledge of video collaboration offerings (Google Meet, Zoom Rooms, Neat, Logitech), meeting space technologies, acoustical design and lighting; video routing and signal flow across live event productions, digital signage networks, conference rooms, and virtual events; live streaming topology (P2P, AWS MediaLive and MediaConnect, encoding, Wirecast, vMix, OBS); PTZ and broadcast cameras with Sony Cinema Line familiarity; show programming (QLab, Stream Deck, Bitfocus Companion, OSC); post-production in DaVinci Resolve; and solid network architecture fundamentals as they apply to AV-over-IP.

• AI fluency as a working practice. You use AI tools daily and can build with them — scripting control logic, generating documentation and runbooks, pulling and analyzing platform data via APIs.

• Capital and vendor accountability. You've owned or materially driven an annual AV budget and a portfolio of integrator and manufacturer relationships, and you can articulate tradeoffs you personally negotiated.

• The attributes that make this role work: a technology enthusiast always excited to learn new apps, devices, and better ways to do things; a passion for automation and highly efficient workflows; outstanding people and communication skills with the ability to influence without positional authority; calm under live-show pressure and willing to own failure modes; you love solving problems and getting at the root of issues; upbeat and positive, motivated by making someone else's day smoother; super detail oriented and highly organized — it bothers you when things aren't lined up properly or documentation doesn't exist; incredibly reliable and you follow through on what you promise; and you proactively handle anticipated issues before they arise. This role is hands-on and San Francisco based, with travel to Gusto sites and event-hours flexibility.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $185,000-208,000 for San Francisco. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate 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.