Founding Engineer
At a glance
Mid-level Software Engineering role at Thera. New York · full-time · $100,000–$250,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Build and improve the systems behind global payroll and moving money
- Take end-to-end responsibility for major product areas, including shipping work on the spend product
- Help guide the engineering team in India while working across time zones
- Work directly with the CEO and product team, and begin leading product discussions
- Establish Thera’s in-person engineering presence in New York and help shape future hiring
What you bring
- Three to seven or more years building and releasing production systems
- You can take a feature from an initial idea through delivery, even when the path is unclear
- You’re comfortable with TypeScript or Java/Kotlin and favor straightforward solutions and high-quality work
Who this fits
This suits a hands-on engineer who wants broad product ownership, can work through ambiguity, and is interested in helping shape a team. It is not a pure management role: you’ll write code while helping lead engineers. The role is based in New York and requires being on-site five days a week, with collaboration across time zones.
From the employer
🚀 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
Core systems powering global payroll and money movement
Large pieces of the product, end-to-end
Helping lead our existing engineering team of 5+ in India
Building our in-person engineering presence in NYC from scratch
Direct partnership with the CEO and product team
Your first 90 days
30 days
Ship a meaningful improvement or net-new feature on the spend product
Get deep with the product team and the India engineering team
60 days
Map out future builds across the roadmap
Start leading product meetings
90 days
Ship autonomously across at least one product surface
Help build out our NYC in-person engineering culture
Influence how we hire the next wave of engineers
About you
3 to 7+ years building and shipping production systems
You thrive in ambiguity, move extremely fast, and care deeply about craft
Comfortable owning features end-to-end from zero to one
Bias toward action, simple solutions, and high standards
Comfortable working with a distributed team across time zones
Stack today: TypeScript + Java/Kotlin
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
Huge ownership and meaningful equity
Direct impact on product and culture
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
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