🚀 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 • Architecture and technical direction across payroll, payments, and new products • Engineering execution on the hardest problems in the stack • Helping hire and tech-lead a small, high-quality team (starting ~5 engineers) • Decisions on security, reliability, scalability, and compliance in your areas • Tight partnership with product and ops to translate real workflows into systems • Roadmaps, prioritization, and actually shipping What you'll build • Systems powering payroll and money movement • Products across Spend, Docs, Cash, and Accounting • Internal tooling that reduces manual work and errors • Infrastructure that increases velocity without breaking things Your first 90 days 30 days • Get deep on the system, data flows, and constraints • Identify the biggest risks (payments, data integrity, scaling) • Ship a meaningful improvement on the spend product 60 days • Start addressing the highest-leverage technical gaps • Map out future builds across the roadmap • Begin influencing how we hire and level engineers 90 days • Set technical direction in your areas • Improve engineering velocity and reliability • 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: https://www.getthera.com/principles