Software Engineer - Agents

About Tensec

Founded in 2023, Tensec is a global fintech that enables small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to enter global trade and thrive by giving them access to global transaction banking solutions that are user-friendly, efficient, and secure.

Tensec founders have driven startups from foundation to exit, built decacorns, and led global teams at companies such as PayPal, Credit Karma, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. We’re putting together a world-class team to disrupt the $50 trillion cross-border b2b financial services industry by providing SMBs the financial strength to participate and win in the global economy.

We believe that successful companies and teams are directly correlated to a company's cultural DNA. At Tensec, we make a deliberate effort to create values and foster a culture able to unleash both human and organizational potential. We strongly believe that the best business results derive from teams that have a strong identification with a mission, push themselves to the edge, and love what they do.

The Tensec team is diverse and global, with members in San Francisco, New York, Miami, Monterrey, and Sao Paulo. We are funded by top venture capital firms such as Quiet Capital, Costanoa Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Clocktower, WillowTree, and prolific angels such as Jason Pate (Chief Strategy Officer, Plaid), Bora Chung (ex-Chief Experience Officer, Bill.com and Board Member, Remitly).

How we work

We move fast, debrief quickly, and expect you to own your output. This is a dynamic company, we value speed and decisiveness over process. You'll have the context you need to make good decisions, and the autonomy to make them.

About the role

You'll own two things simultaneously: the shared agentic infrastructure that makes intelligent workflows possible at Tensec, and the agents and product features that run on top of it. One day you're designing the context management system that every agent depends on. The next you're shipping an agent that automates a workflow for our operations or treasury team — or a feature that a customer interacts with directly.

This isn't a role with a narrow scope. You'll be expected to understand the business problems behind the work, not just execute on specs. You'll own problems end to end and see them through to production.

What you'll do

• Design and build the core agentic infrastructure at Tensec: orchestration, tool execution, context and session management, policy controls, and observability

• Build, ship, and operate agents that automate real financial workflows across operations, compliance, and treasury, from transaction document review to Know Your Business and sanctions screening

• Ship product features end to end, from backend services and APIs to experiences built on top of agentic capabilities, serving both internal and external customers

• Drive build versus buy decisions on third-party components, integrate where it accelerates us, own what matters for reliability and trust

• Build evaluation and monitoring systems to ensure agents are accurate, reliable, and safe in a regulated financial environment

• Write clean, reliable, well-tested, well-documented code, and define best practices for development, testing, deployment, and monitoring.

• Proactively monitor, identify, and resolve production issues to keep the experience fast, secure, and reliable.

• Contribute to engineering standards, code review, and the technical growth of the team

• Stay on top of where the industry is heading — and bring new tools, patterns, and ideas back to make our systems better

• Work effectively with people across time zones and regions

What we're looking for

• 5+ years of backend software engineering with a track record of shipping production systems end to end

• Hands-on experience building and shipping agentic systems or large language model-powered workflows in production

• Strong product sense: you understand business needs, think from the end user's perspective, and care about whether what you ship actually creates value

• Strong fundamentals across APIs, distributed systems, databases, and cloud-native architecture

• Comfortable moving between infrastructure thinking and hands-on product iteration, you don't stay in one lane

• Comfortable owning ambiguous problems, you can scope, build, ship, and iterate without a lot of hand-holding

• Experience in an early-stage startup or demonstrated ability to work at that pace

• Node.js or Python backend experience; comfort with AWS and modern CI/CD tooling

• Experience or genuine interest in regulated industries where correctness and compliance are non-negotiable

To thrive in this role, you have:

• Passion for building effective domain-specific agents

• Experience working with LLM APIs and agent frameworks

• Familiarity with orchestration frameworks, tool use, Model Context Protocol surfaces, or evaluation pipelines

What you'll learn

• How to build production-grade AI systems in a compliance-sensitive financial environment

• Cross-border payments and FX infrastructure at scale across Brazil, Mexico, the US, and beyond

• What it looks like to build a company from the ground up, with real ownership and real stakes

Compensation, Benefits and Perks

• The expected salary range for this role is $182,000 – $230,000 per year. Actual compensation will depend on experience, skills, and qualifications.

• Equity

• Medical, dental and vision

• 15 days paid time off

• Learning and development budget

This role follows a hybrid model. We ask that you're in our Palo Alto office 2–3 days per week.

Tensec is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

Tensec is a diverse and inclusive company committed to growing a diverse and inclusive team. We invite people of all backgrounds and identities to apply. Additionally, we encourage everyone to share which pronouns you wish for us to use when addressing you (i.e., she/her, he/him, they/them).

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. Please let your recruiter know if you require an accommodation during the application or interview process.