Staff Engineer

🚀 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