USD per year
Chief Technology Officer - (NYC)
$120K - $201K • 0.01% - 0.05% • New York Job type Full-time Role Engineering, Full stack Experience 3+ years Visa US citizen/visa only
About the role
🚀 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.
🔗 More
https://www.getthera.com/principles
Thera is a payroll and payments platform for startups, small businesses, and global teams. It offers US payroll, contractor payments worldwide, and international employee hiring all in one place. Features include automated payroll, tax filings, benefits administration, contractor management, employer of record services in 150+ countries, compliance handling, and multiple payout methods. Thera handles federal, state, and local tax filings for US payroll and local labor laws and regulatory updates for every country where you hire. Provides dedicated support with a Slack channel available 24/7.
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