Source description
About the role
🚀 Staff Engineer, Thera (NYC, in-person)
Thera is building the financial OS for modern SMBs. Payroll, payments, treasury, spend, accounting, and docs in one system that actually works end-to-end.
We're looking for a hands-on Staff Engineer to own the technical foundation in our highest-leverage areas and help us scale from "great product" to category-defining company.
This is not a sit-back-and-manage role. You'll be in the code, in the architecture, and in the room making high-stakes decisions daily.
📍 NYC, 5 days/week
Why this role exists
We have:
a product customers use
real workflows running through it
increasing complexity across payments, accounting, and ops
We need someone who can turn that into a durable, scalable system.
What you'll own
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Architecture and technical direction across payroll, payments, and new products
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Engineering execution on the hardest problems in the stack
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Helping hire and tech-lead a small, high-quality team (starting ~5 engineers)
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Decisions on security, reliability, scalability, and compliance in your areas
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Tight partnership with product and ops to translate real workflows into systems
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Roadmaps, prioritization, and actually shipping
What you'll build
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Systems powering payroll and money movement
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Products across Spend, Docs, Cash, and Accounting
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Internal tooling that reduces manual work and errors
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Infrastructure that increases velocity without breaking things
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Your first 90 days
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30 days
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Get deep on the system, data flows, and constraints
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Identify the biggest risks (payments, data integrity, scaling)
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Ship a meaningful improvement on the spend product
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60 days
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Start addressing the highest-leverage technical gaps
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Map out future builds across the roadmap
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Begin influencing how we hire and level engineers
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90 days
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Set technical direction in your areas
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Improve engineering velocity and reliability
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Help build out our engineering in-person culture
About you
You've built and scaled real systems
You're still hands-on and like being close to the code
Strong systems thinker
You move fast and take ownership
Comfortable operating in a regulated environment
You've mentored or tech-led engineers before
Stack today: TypeScript + Java/Kotlin (flexible)
Not a fit if
You want a pure management role
You avoid ambiguity or messy real-world systems
You're not willing to be in-person in NYC
Why Thera
You shape the technical foundation in your areas
You work directly with founders
Your decisions immediately impact the company's trajectory
Backed by YC, 10X Founders, Zillionize, and Amino Capital.
More at Thera