Senior Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer

Trayd is building the operating system for commercial construction: payroll, compliance, and back office workflows that actually work in the real world. Construction is one of the biggest industries in North America, and it still runs on a messy mix of spreadsheets, legacy payroll providers, and manual processes that break the moment things get even slightly complex. The people doing the work are the hardest working people in the country, and the companies running crews are forced to spend hours every week fighting systems that were never built for them. We're changing that. Trayd started with a simple promise: construction workers should be able to access the money they already earned faster, and subcontractors should be able to run payroll without chaos. Today, we're building deeper infrastructure across payroll, union rules, job costing, and accounting workflows so our customers can run their businesses with confidence. We're in the next phase of growth, with accelerating customer demand and a platform that runs real payroll every week, and we're scaling engineering to match it. Trayd is based in New York and backed by Y Combinator.

The Role

We're hiring a senior software engineer to help build the core systems that power Trayd. This is not a "take tickets and stay in your lane" job. Engineers at Trayd own product areas end-to-end. You'll design, build, ship, and maintain real systems that move real money, under real compliance constraints, for customers who depend on us every week. Payroll is one of the only product categories where 99% accuracy is an F. The systems have to be built for correctness, traceability, and edge cases from day one. You'll work on a small, high-output team where decisions are made quickly, quality matters, and your work will show up in production constantly.

What You'll Do

• Own major projects end-to-end: scoping, technical design, implementation, testing, and release
• Build full-stack features across the frontend, backend, and data layers in a production SaaS environment
• Design and evolve systems for payroll, deductions, benefits, compliance, and accounting workflows where correctness matters
• Model and migrate relational data in Postgres for complex real-world financial workflows
• Make strong architectural tradeoffs in ambiguous, fast-moving product environments
• Debug production issues, improve reliability, and drive problems through to resolution
• Collaborate closely with product and operations to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions
• Work directly with customers and internal stakeholders to understand how construction companies actually operate
• Contribute as a senior engineer through code reviews, design discussions, and raising the quality bar across the team

Example Problems You Might Work On

• Building workflows that handle union pay rules, deductions, and benefits correctly across job types and locations
• Designing systems that make payroll auditable and explainable, not just "it worked somehow"
• Making accounting exports and job-costing data reliable enough that controllers trust them
• Improving performance and correctness in a system that processes large amounts of payroll data under deadlines
• Creating tooling and guardrails that prevent edge cases from becoming customer emergencies

Why Trayd

• This is real infrastructure. Payroll and compliance are high-stakes. The work is technical, regulated, and unforgiving in the best way
• You will have real ownership. You won't be one engineer on a giant team shipping tiny changes. You will own systems that matter
• We're winning in a hard market. Strong customer demand, real usage, and a product that customers rely on weekly
• The domain is deep. Construction is full of complexity that most software ignores. We build for the real workflows
• In-person team, high velocity. We work together in Soho five days a week because it makes us faster and sharper
• You'll grow quickly. Small team, high responsibility, constant production exposure, and meaningful influence over the product

On payroll days, the whole team runs together. We provide meals because those days matter here.

Who You Are

• 5+ years building production software on a team
• Full-stack capable (or excited to be) and comfortable working across systems
• High ownership mindset: you ship, you fix, you follow through
• Strong judgment balancing speed, correctness, and maintainability
• You communicate clearly and collaborate well across functions
• NYC-based or ready to relocate quickly

Nice to Have

• React, Next.js, Prisma, tRPC, Postgres
• Strong TypeScript and Node.js fundamentals
• Experience in fintech, payroll, accounting, compliance, or other high-stakes systems

Working Style

This is an in-person role in Soho, five days a week. We move quickly, we whiteboard constantly, and we build with shared ownership. If you want to ship important software fast with a team that cares about doing it right, you'll fit here.

Compensation

The base pay range for this role is $185,000 – $220,000 per year.