Job description
🚀 CTO — 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 CTO to own the technical foundation 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
- 🧠 Technical strategy + architecture across the platform
- ⚙️ Engineering execution across payroll, payments, and new products
- 👥 Hiring and leading a small, high-quality team (starting ~5 engineers)
- 🔐 Decisions on security, reliability, scalability, and compliance
- 🔄 Tight partnership with product + 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 biggest risks (payments, data integrity, scaling)
- Ship improvements quickly
60 days
- Clean up priorities and execution
- Start addressing highest-leverage technical gaps
- Begin building out the team
90 days
- Establish a clear technical direction
- Improve engineering velocity and reliability
- Create a foundation that can actually scale
🧠 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 know how to hire and level up engineers
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 define the technical foundation from here
- You work directly with founders
- Your decisions immediately impact the company’s trajectory
Backed by YC, 10X Founders, Zillionize, and Amino Capital.