Staff Engineer

## About the role 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