Gusto Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 183 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Gusto.
Gusto
Software Engineer
Staff Average Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Background check
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical
I was supposed to have a recruiter call, but they emailed me 10 minutes late saying they were in an urgent meeting. We rescheduled for the next Friday, but again, no call. Fifteen minutes after the scheduled time, I got an email saying the recruiter had the flu. They asked for my availability for Monday, and I gave them a six-hour window. The confirmation email was for a time outside of that window, but at least the recruiter called this time. It was a standard recruiter screen and seemed fine. The recruiter said they'd meet with the hiring team in a few days and get back to me by the end of the week. I followed up early the next week without a response, and then again the week after that. I didn't get a response to my second follow-up, but the day after, I got a generic rejection email from Gusto. The recruiter's general incompetence made me question if my application even reached the right person. I found the hiring manager on LinkedIn and messaged him directly. He confirmed my resume got to him but said he probably 'screened it out quickly' because I didn't list the tech stack for each role, making it unclear if I had Rails experience. Ruby and Rails are in my skills section, and my cover letter mentioned them, but he apparently didn't read it and expected 'Ruby on Rails' to be all over my resume. The job seemed interesting, but given the negative interactions, I'm not upset about not getting it.
Confirmed questions3 questions
- Did you have Rails experience?
- What was the reason for discussing my previous experience for 25 minutes if that information was not forwarded to the hiring manager, who then used a "quick resume glance and reject if not exact match" approach for his own screening?
- If I were in charge of hiring at Gusto, I would consider making some adjustments to the process.
Gusto
Software Engineer
Senior Difficult Negative experience No offer 10 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite Background check
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral System Design
I went through at least 10 interviews over 2 months. This included several coding sessions, multiple behavioral chats with various people, and a system design interview. Despite several positive signals, I was ghosted at the end. Honestly, they seemed disorganized and comfortable wasting time. The recruiter mentioned at the start they were just 'casually browsing,' which makes me wonder if the jobs posted are even real. I applied myself this time, but a recruiter reached out last year and also ghosted me mid-process without a word.
Confirmed questions3 questions
- FAANG style - Leetcode Questions
- Behavioural Questions
- System design
Gusto
Software Engineer
Senior Average Positive experience No offer 6 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen Onsite Background check Offer
Interview formats
Technical Coding System Design Behavioral
The recruiter was super helpful and laid out the whole, pretty LONG, interview process for me. I ended up going through SIX interview rounds, which felt like a lot. They don't reject you early; you have to do all the rounds before hearing back. I had to take PTO from my regular job to do three interviews with Gusto almost back-to-back. Most of the interviewers were great – helpful and collaborative, not adversarial. Except for one guy who did a skills assessment; he seemed really arrogant and didn't explain the problem well, making it feel uncomfortable. I wouldn't want to work with him. I got rejected a week after the final interview. The rejection was standard and nicely written. The people were nice, and the company seems cool, so it was a bummer to go through so many interviews and still get rejected. Seriously, Gusto, do you need SIX rounds?
Confirmed questions5 questions
- The first skills-based interview involved manipulating payouts in a hash. People are owed money, and Gusto is their payroll and has to pay them out evenly. Code this and show your work.
- Behavior interviews were standard. Read other Glassdoor reviews for Gusto. They were fairly easy. Have 5 stories you’re prepared to talk about from your past experiences at your current/former company. I highly recommend using ChatGPT as your behavior interview trainer.
- The second skills assessment question — with the “know it all” interviewer — was complicated. It dealt with tax deductions from payroll. The problem was that it had a lot of domain knowledge associated with it. I don’t know how payroll works and not knowing that hurt me in the interview. I recall needing to use Time functions (practice those) and also be comfortable working with hashes and arrays.
Gusto Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Gusto interview reports.
“Given an input string and an array of substrings, find the substrings within the string and wrap them with bold HTML tags.”
Read reports →“Given the radius and coordinates of circles, and the y-axis height, determine if a grid is traversable by a 1x1 square on the x-axis.”
Read reports →“If you're given a string like "asdfxyz" and a list of substrings like ["sd", "xy"], how would you return those substrings enclosed in bold tags?”
Read reports →“Can you print out all the paths from the root to the leaves of a tree?”
Read reports →“Given a string and a list of substrings, can you find all occurrences of those substrings within the string and wrap them with bold HTML tags?”
Read report →“Given a dataset of customers, identify the year with the highest number of customers at any given point.”
Read report →“Can you write a program that converts numbers into their word form? For example, 1001 should become 'One thousand and one'.”
Read report →“Can you determine if it's possible to cross a hallway, with lights placed at certain spots and with specific light-casting ranges, by staying only in the unlit sections?”
Read report →“Can you parse out the request_identifier, called, response_time_mean, and response_time_median from the provided HTTP GET responses and format it as JSON?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 183 Gusto interview reports.