Chief Technology Officer - (NYC)

🚀 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