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At a glance
Job overview
Thera is hiring a Founding Engineer. Thera is building a financial operating system for SMBs, integrating payroll, payments, treasury, spend, and accounting. They seek a founding engineer in NYC to own core payroll and money‑movement systems, lead a distributed team, and establish an in‑person engineering culture while working closely with the CEO.
Key focus areas include Own core systems powering global payroll and money movement, Develop large pieces of the product end‑to‑end, and Help lead the existing engineering team in India.
Successful candidates bring 3 To 7+ Years Building And Shipping Production Systems and Willing To Be In-Person In NYC. Important skills include TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Thrive In Ambiguity, Move Extremely Fast, and Care Deeply About Craft.
Skills & qualifications
Skills
Qualifications
Full job description
🚀 FOUNDING ENGINEER, THERA (NYC)
Thera is building the financial OS for modern SMBs. Payroll, payments, treasury, spend, and accounting in one ecosystem that actually works end-to-end.
We're looking for our first NYC-based Founding Engineer to help scale the systems powering global payroll and money movement, work alongside our existing engineering team in India, and seed our in-person engineering culture from day one.
This is a true founding role. You'll be in the code, owning large pieces of the product, and working directly with the CEO.
📍 NYC, 5 days/week
Why we started Thera
Our founders saw firsthand how broken SMB payroll and finance had become. The average SMB stitches together 5+ tools just to pay people, move money, and close their books. We started Thera to collapse that fragmented stack into a single source of truth.
Backed by YC, 10X Founders, Zillionize, and Amino Capital.
What you'll own
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Core systems powering global payroll and money movement
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Large pieces of the product, end-to-end
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Helping lead our existing engineering team of 5+ in India
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Building our in-person engineering presence in NYC from scratch
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Direct partnership with the CEO and product team
Your first 90 days
30 days
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Ship a meaningful improvement or net-new feature on the spend product
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Get deep with the product team and the India engineering team
60 days
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Map out future builds across the roadmap
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Start leading product meetings
90 days
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Ship autonomously across at least one product surface
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Help build out our NYC in-person engineering culture
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Influence how we hire the next wave of engineers
About you
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3 to 7+ years building and shipping production systems
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You thrive in ambiguity, move extremely fast, and care deeply about craft
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Comfortable owning features end-to-end from zero to one
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Bias toward action, simple solutions, and high standards
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Comfortable working with a distributed team across time zones
Stack today: TypeScript + Java/Kotlin
Not a fit if
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You want a pure management role
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You avoid ambiguity or messy real-world systems
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You're not willing to be in-person in NYC
Why Thera
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Huge ownership and meaningful equity
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Direct impact on product and culture
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A chance to build one of the most important fintech platforms of the next decade
Read more about our cultural principles: https://www.getthera.com/principles
You've read the whole posting — now see how you match it.