Software Engineer - Internal Operations and Tools
First engineer on a new Internal Operations and Tools team at Tereina, a B2B cross-border payments startup, reporting directly to the CTO. You'll build AI agents and internal tools (Java/Spring Boot microservices on Kubernetes plus LLM/agent frameworks like Google ADK) to automate payment exceptions, reconciliation, and internal analytics.
- Compensation
- $150K–$180K / yr
- Location
- San Francisco OR San Diego
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 3+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 3+ years in software engineering, building and shipping backend or full-stack systems to production
- Hands-on experience building applications with large language models using enterprise agentic frameworks (tool use / function calling, agents, retrieval, prompt engineering)
- Experience with Google ADK in real work scenarios
- Proficiency in Java and Spring Boot, Python, or TypeScript
- Solid understanding of REST APIs, SQL, and relational databases
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (GCP preferred), containers and Kubernetes, and distributed systems fundamentals
- Daily, fluent use of modern AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot)
- Self-directed with end-to-end ownership, comfortable with ambiguity in an early-stage environment
- Excited to try new things, learn quickly, and challenge the status quo
- Able to work directly with non-technical users and explain clearly what tools can and cannot do
Nice to have
- Experience with agent frameworks and protocols (e.g., Model Context Protocol, Google ADK, LangGraph)
- Experience building internal tools, admin consoles, or operations workflows
- Data and analytics experience (e.g., BigQuery, SQL modeling, dashboards)
- Experience in payments, banking, treasury, or another regulated financial environment, including payment exceptions, returns, and reconciliation
- Experience with durable workflow orchestration (e.g., Temporal) and message-driven systems (e.g., Google Pub/Sub, Kafka)
- Familiarity with Jira Service Management or similar ticketing and workflow platforms, including automation and integrations
- Familiarity with SAP ERP payment processes or embedded finance within enterprise ERP systems
- Familiarity with GCP and infrastructure as code
Full description
About Tereina
Tereina is on a mission to revolutionize B2B payments. We're a well-funded, early-stage startup supported by one of the largest software companies in the world, SAP. We’re building cutting-edge solutions that will transform the way businesses move money. Our platform handles cross-border payment processing, counterparty management, bank account administration, and compliance workflows for enterprise customers worldwide.
The Internal Operations and Tools team is a new team, reporting directly to our CTO, that builds AI agents and internal tools into the Tereina platform. Its mission is to let a small team operate a global payments business at scale — automating how we investigate and resolve payment exceptions, reconcile transactions, and triage operational work, and giving everyone in the company fast, trustworthy answers from our data. The team builds on our Java and Spring Boot microservices running on Kubernetes, our event-driven messaging, and the latest large language models and agent frameworks.
About the Role
Reporting directly to the CTO, the Software Engineer – Internal Operations and Tools will be the first engineer on a new team focused on building agentic tools into the Tereina platform for payment operations and internal analytics. You will design, build, and ship AI agents and internal tools end to end, working side by side with our Payment Operations team to automate the work they do every day.
This is a role for someone who is hungry, works hard, and gets energy from trying new things. The AI landscape moves every week — you will experiment quickly, keep what works, and take it all the way to production on real financial workflows. As the first engineer, you will help shape the team's technology, practices, and culture as it grows.
Key Responsibilities
- Build Agentic Tools: Design and implement AI agents that use Tereina's APIs, data, and workflows to investigate and resolve operational issues — payment exceptions, held and failed payments, reconciliation breaks, and operational tickets — with clear human review and approval points.
- Automate Payment Operations: Work directly with operators to understand their workflows, identify the highest-value automation opportunities, and ship tools that measurably reduce manual work and time to resolution.
- Internal Analytics: Build AI-assisted analytics and reporting that let teams ask questions of our payments data in plain language and get accurate, explainable answers, while keeping our customers data secure and adhering to our data sharing policies.
- Platform Integration: Build secure tool and data integrations — APIs, MCP servers, event consumers, and ticketing integrations — between agents and our backend services and data systems.