- Salary
- $100k – $250k/yr
- Location
- New York, New York, US
- Type
- Full-time
- Department
- Engineering
- Seniority
- Senior
- Source
- Y Combinator
Description
🚀 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
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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
Your first 90 days
30 days
-
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
60 days
-
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
90 days
-
Set technical direction in your areas
-
Improve engineering velocity and reliability
-
Help build out our engineering in-person culture
About you
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You've built and scaled real systems
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You're still hands-on and like being close to the code
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Strong systems thinker
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You move fast and take ownership
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Comfortable operating in a regulated environment
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You've mentored or tech-led engineers before
Stack today: TypeScript + Java/Kotlin (flexible)
Not a fit if
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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.
