Software Engineer - Internal Operations and Tools

Confidential; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Tereina is building AI-driven tools for payment operations and internal analytics. You will ship AI agents and internal tools end to end, collaborating with the Payment Operations team to automate workflows.

As the first engineer on the team, you will shape technology choices, practices, and culture while working on production‑level financial workflows and cutting‑edge agent frameworks.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in software engineering with backend or full‑stack production experience.
• Hands‑on experience with large language models and enterprise agent frameworks.
• Proficiency in Java and Spring Boot, plus Python or TypeScript.
• Experience with cloud platforms (GCP preferred), containers, Kubernetes.
• Ability to work with non‑technical users and explain capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Build AI agents and internal tools end‑to‑end.
• Automate payment operations and reduce manual work.
• Develop internal analytics and explainable dashboards.
• Create secure tool/data integrations between agents and backend services.
• Implement evaluations, tests, and monitoring for reliability.
• Apply least‑privilege access and auditability practices.
• Prototype with new models and share learnings with the team.

Skills

Backend

AI/LLM

Java/Spring

Cloud/K8s

REST/SQL

Tools

Google ADK

Kubernetes

BigQuery

Job 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.

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.
• Evaluate & Harden: Create evaluations, tests, and monitoring that keep our AI tools accurate, safe, and reliable as models, data, and workflows change.
• Security & Auditability: Apply least-privilege access, audit logging, and data-protection practices appropriate for a regulated payments business.
• Explore & Experiment: Rapidly prototype with new models, frameworks, and techniques, and share what you learn with the wider engineering team.

Qualifications

• Experience: 3+ years in software engineering, building and shipping backend or full-stack systems to production.
• Applied AI: Hands‑on experience building applications with large language models, using enterprise agentic frameworks — tool use / function calling, agents, retrieval, or prompt engineering. Experience with Google ADK in real work scenarios is a must.
• Technical Foundation: Proficiency in Java and Spring Boot, Python, or TypeScript, with a solid understanding of REST APIs, SQL, and relational databases.
• Cloud & Systems: Familiarity with cloud platforms (GCP preferred), containers and Kubernetes, and distributed systems fundamentals.
• AI Tooling Proficiency: Daily, fluent use of modern AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar) to move faster and raise code quality.
• Drive & Ownership: Hungry, high‑energy, and self‑directed — you take ownership end to end and are comfortable working with ambiguity in an early‑stage environment.
• Curiosity & Innovation: Genuinely excited to try new things, learn quickly, and challenge the way things have always been done.
• Communication: Able to work directly with non‑technical users, understand their problems, and explain clearly what your tools can and cannot do.

Preferred Qualifications

• 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.

Why Join?

• Growth: Own the platform and the operations function end‑to‑end, and expand your scope across new products, rails, partners, and markets as we scale.
• Impact: Shape how payments operations scale at a fast‑moving B2B payments company.
• Innovation: Work at the intersection of payments operations and AI‑enabled automation.
• Culture: Join a collaborative team that values curiosity, inclusion, and sustainable work.

We are looking for curious, driven builders who want to create secure, scalable, user‑friendly payments products.

We embrace AI as a powerful tool for innovation and welcome team members eager to leverage it in their work. As an equal opportunity employer, we're committed to diversity, inclusion, and creating an environment where everyone can thrive.