Founding Full-Stack Engineer Chicago, IL or Remote

In 1494, a Franciscan mathematician named Luca Pacioli published a book in Venice that described the double-entry ledger: a simple but powerful idea that every movement of value should have a corresponding record.

It gave merchants a way to make a complicated world more understandable. Trade was expanding across cities, currencies, ships, suppliers, and customers. The ledger did not remove that complexity. It gave people a system for seeing it clearly enough to act with confidence.

More than five centuries later, many businesses still run their financial lives through a version of the same problem.

Money moves through bank accounts, cards, payroll systems, accounting platforms, invoices, tax documents, spreadsheets, payment processors, and international transfers. The tools are more sophisticated, but the experience is often still fragmented. Operators spend too much time reconciling the past and not enough time making better decisions for the future.

Ora is being built to change that.

We are creating a premium financial operating system for modern businesses: one place for banking, cards, spend, bill pay, invoicing, tax readiness, global financial operations, and intelligent financial guidance. Our ambition is to make business finance feel less fragmented, less stressful, and far more capable.

We are looking for a Founding Full-Stack Engineer to help build that foundation.

This is not a role for someone who wants to inherit a mature codebase and work inside narrow technical boundaries. It is a role for an engineer who wants meaningful ownership: shaping the architecture, product decisions, engineering culture, and systems behind a company that customers may eventually trust with some of their most important financial workflows.

You will work directly with the founder and early team to turn Ora’s product vision into a reliable, secure, and beautifully crafted platform.

* Ora is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through banking partners.

Build customer-facing product experiences across Ora’s banking, cards, spend management, bill pay, invoicing, tax readiness, global finance, and intelligence products.

Design and implement reliable full-stack systems across frontend applications, backend services, APIs, databases, and internal tools.

Help establish the architecture behind Ora’s financial workflows, including transactions, balances, payment states, approvals, permissions, audit trails, and integrations.

Build integrations with banking infrastructure, card programs, accounting platforms, payroll providers, payment processors, and other business systems.

Partner closely with product and design to make complex financial workflows feel simple, clear, and premium.

Help build Ora’s intelligence layer, including document workflows, financial insights, automation, and AI-assisted product experiences.

Develop secure systems for authentication, role-based access, sensitive data, document storage, and operational logging.

Own projects from early technical exploration through launch, iteration, and long-term maintenance.

Establish strong standards for testing, code review, observability, documentation, deployment, and production reliability.

Help shape Ora’s future engineering team, culture, and technical direction as we grow.

Has 4+ years of full-stack engineering experience, ideally in a startup, fintech, SaaS, payments, or other technically complex product environment.

Is highly capable with Type Script, React, Next.js, Node.js, APIs, and relational databases such as PostgreSQL.

Enjoys working across the stack, from polished product interfaces to backend systems and data models.

Has strong product instincts and empathy for users. You care about making software feel intuitive, not merely functional.

Can make thoughtful tradeoffs in ambiguous environments and move quickly without sacrificing quality.

Is comfortable working with third‑party APIs, webhooks, asynchronous jobs, queues, integrations, and event‑driven workflows.

Understands the importance of security, privacy, access controls, reliability, and auditability when building products that handle…