Senior Manager, Escalation Services

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.

Gusto is hiring a Senior Leader to lead our Escalation Services team within Benefits Services. This role is two jobs at once: operate a white-glove escalation service, and become the owner of Gusto's escalation ecosystem — co-creating the next iteration of how escalations are handled, not just managing the team that handles them today. You'll lead a team of specialists, accountable for how Gusto shows up today when something has already gone wrong for a customer — while simultaneously redesigning the intake, triage, tooling, and root-cause infrastructure that determines how well Escalation Services performs a year from now.

Your team owns comprehensive, white-glove escalation management: executive escalations, access-to-care emergencies, and any internally or externally sourced escalation involving missing or inaccurate benefits — health insurance chief among them. When a member can't fill a prescription, an employee loses active coverage, or a customer executive needs a direct answer, your team is the one that steps in, resolves it, and closes the loop.

The other half is the build. This function's current operating model — how escalations get triaged, routed, resolved, and learned from — wasn't designed for the volume and complexity it now handles. You're being hired to rethink it at a system level — what gets automated, what gets simplified, and what a scalable escalation ecosystem looks like as Gusto grows. Your impact will be measured in leverage: how much escalation volume the system can absorb without depending on individual heroics, and how clearly escalation health becomes a trusted, leading indicator for leadership. You'll also be a senior partner in shaping how AI transforms escalation work at Gusto — building the automation roadmap, coaching your team to use it, and reducing the administrative overhead that keeps specialists from spending time where it matters most: with the customer.

Escalation Services is the last line of defense when a case has outgrown standard resolution — the point where a missed or inaccurate benefit stops being an operational miss and becomes someone's actual health coverage, prescription, or procedure. We sit at the highest-stakes intersection of Benefits Services, owning the resolution of Gusto's most complex, highest-visibility cases: executive escalations, access-to-care emergencies, and benefit inaccuracies that affect a customer's coverage.

We measure ourselves by speed, accuracy, and how the customer feels on the other end of the call — because for the people we serve, an unresolved escalation isn't an inconvenience, it's a real gap in their care. Every case that reaches this team already matters to someone; our job is to make sure it never has to escalate again.

As an AI-native company, we don't just use technology — it's the backbone of how we work. Senior leaders on this team are expected to model digital fluency and a proactive approach to leveraging AI tooling to speed resolution, surface root cause, and free up capacity for the cases that need a human touch most.

Operate a white-glove escalation service

Rebuild the system

Success looks like

• Lead the specialists who run Escalation Services, running a structured cadence — weekly 1:1s, team forums, monthly business reviews.
• Serve as point of contact for Gusto's highest-visibility escalations — coordinating cross-functionally to drive resolution and providing clear, confident status updates to customer executives and internal stakeholders alike.
• Step into the most sensitive and highest-risk cases yourself — executive-visible, compliance-related, or reputationally significant — working them alongside your team, not just above it.
• Coach your team to operate as drivers, not passengers — owning the case end-to-end, communicating proactively, and holding the bar on white-glove service without waiting to be told what “good” looks like.

Leadership experience

Executive-level escalation management

Operational rigor

AI-native builder

Coaching and development depth

Domain-relevant experience (preferred)

Our cash compensation range for this role is $119,185/year to $146,000/year in Denver and Phoenix. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate location, experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

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.

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.