---
title: 'Founding Engineer at Thera'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-engineer-thera-new-york-d3en6pwnapav'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Founding Engineer at Thera

- **Company:** Thera
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Compensation:** $100k–$250k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-11-17
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/thera/4723563e-ffd3-427f-8077-014eedf33dcf

## 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

- 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

## About Thera

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Thera is a payroll and global employment platform that combines US payroll, contractor payments, and Employer of Record (EOR) services with a rewards program that lets users earn points redeemable for travel and services.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed-stage; Y Combinator S22)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Akhil Reddy (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Payroll & Benefits, Global Employment (EOR), Contractor Management, Fintech
- **Target customers**: B2B – startups, small businesses, and global teams that need to hire and pay employees and contractors across multiple countries
- **Mission or purpose**: “The most rewarding payroll platform. Ever.” – making payroll and global hiring simple, compliant, and engaging through a points-based rewards system.

## Products & Services
- **US Payroll**: Run multi-state payroll with automated tax filings, state registrations, and compliance. Onboarding in 1–3 days.
- **Contractor Management**: Pay independent contractors in 150+ countries with best exchange rates, 8 payout methods, and same-day withdrawals. Contractors earn points on payouts.
- **Employer of Record (EOR)**: Hire employees in 150+ countries without setting up legal entities. Handles compliance, tax filings, and benefits administration.
- **Benefits Administration**: Automates health insurance, retirement plans, and statutory benefits that meet local requirements.
- **Thera Points Rewards**: Users (both employers and contractors) earn points on payroll/payouts that can be redeemed for flights, hotels, and services.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of $8.1M (across 2 seed rounds: $4.0M in Aug 2022 and $4.0M in Aug 2024, plus a smaller $125K seed in Mar 2022)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (Batch S22); 10+ investors in the 2024 seed round (names not publicly listed). Banking services provided by a partner bank.
- **Growth Signals**: 23 employees (+18.8% YoY), 4 active job postings, monthly job postings up 33.3% YoY. LinkedIn followers grew 23.1% in the past year. Expanding engineering, marketing, and GTM teams.

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-native payroll engine** that automates tax calculations, filings, and regulatory changes across jurisdictions.
- **Points-based rewards system** – a unique differentiator that turns a commodity (payroll processing) into an engaging, value-adding experience for customers and contractors.
- **Speed of onboarding** – most customers go live in 1–3 days, with data migration handled by Thera.
- **Dedicated Slack support** – 24/7 access to real people for payroll, compliance, and technical questions.
- **Full-stack global employment** – US payroll, international EOR, and contractor payments in one platform, reducing vendor fragmentation.

## Strategic Focus
- Build an “AI-native Finance OS” that unifies payroll, AP/AR, and payment solutions for global teams.
- Deepen EOR capabilities and expand into more countries (currently 150+).
- Continue scaling the rewards program to drive customer acquisition and retention.
- Grow engineering and product teams to accelerate platform automation and AI features.

## Why Work Here
- **Founding team** from Palantir and Amazon – strong engineering culture and high standards.
- **Y Combinator-backed** (S22) – fast-paced, iterative environment with a “Move Fast” principle.
- **Culture principles** (“Thera 10”) emphasize customer obsession, excellence, and speed – “simple to remember, hard to live up to.”
- **Remote/hybrid**: HQ in New York, NY (1460 Broadway) with offices in India and Serbia. Roles listed include both NYC-based and remote options.
- **Growth opportunity**: Early-stage company (23 people) with 4 open roles – chance to have outsized impact and shape product and culture.
- **Perks**: Thera Points rewards for contractors; employees likely benefit from the platform’s own benefits administration.

## Sources
1. [getthera.com](https://www.getthera.com/)
2. [getthera.com/principles](https://www.getthera.com/principles)
3. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/thera](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/thera)
4. [linkedin.com/company/getthera](https://www.linkedin.com/company/getthera)
5. [ycombinator.com/companies/thera/jobs](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/thera/jobs)

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