Sphere

Mission: Sphere has built the world’s first AI-native tax engine that helps companies like Eleven Labs, Replit, Runway AI, Windsurf (+ many more) automate their sales tax, VAT and GST obligations: We're growing rapidly (34%+ MoM revenue growth) and helping the fastest growing tech companies around the world including Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf, Fathom, Linktree, Photoroom, Sierra AI, Zed etc We’ve spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes (no other vendor has done this) We're building the world's first AI-native tax engine (which will be the foundation for a broader cross border compliance platform; think Deel for international billing) We're well funded by Felicis Ventures and YC We’re looking for a swiss army knife / Chief of Staff to work directly with our CEO at Sphere! Why this is a massive opportunity 🌍 Massive TAM: Every business around the world needs this. Compliance isn’t optional. 🌬️ Strong macro tailwinds: Businesses are expanding globally at a faster pace, while tax authorities are cracking down on cross-border compliance, driving urgent demand. ✨ AI advantage: Incumbents can’t scale beyond the U.S.; our AI-native tax engine can. 🔮 Product vision: Indirect tax is just the start; we’re building the Deel for international billing. What you will do Within days: Work directly with our CEO and Founder on the below: Assist with automating registration and filing operations of our clients at Sphere Setup revops / sales ops processes to enhance BD operations Conduct research into international jurisdictions on cross border compliance rules Within months: Own key operational processes across the business Assist CEO on KPI tracking and reporting Identify areas of automation across the busienss What we are looking for High attention to detail - one of our key values is ‘Sweating the details’ and it is essential in our business Someone looking to grind / work hard - Nick (our CEO) works late, on weekends etc. You need to be ok with those sorts of hours as it will allow you to learn faster Strong communication skills - we work at an extremely fast pace and so clear, concise communication is essential Multi tasking capabilities - a lot will be thrown at you and you’ll need to manage your time wisely

Mission: Sphere has built the world’s first AI-native tax engine that helps companies like Eleven Labs, Replit, Runway AI, Windsurf (+ many more) automate their sales tax, VAT and GST obligations: We're growing rapidly (34%+ MoM revenue growth) and helping the fastest growing tech companies around the world including Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf, Fathom, Linktree, Photoroom, Sierra AI, Zed etc We’ve spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes (no other vendor has done this) We're building the world's first AI-native tax engine (which will be the foundation for a broader cross border compliance platform; think Deel for international billing) We're well funded by Felicis Ventures and YC Sphere is looking for a Founding Account Executive to work closely with the Founder (who has been doing founder-led sales to date) to help target mid-market US-based companies selling globally. Why this is a massive opportunity: 🌍 Massive TAM: Every business around the world needs this. Compliance isn’t optional. 🌬️ Strong macro tailwinds: Businesses are expanding globally at a faster pace, while tax authorities are cracking down on cross-border compliance, driving urgent demand. ✨ AI advantage: Incumbents can’t scale beyond the U.S.; our AI-native tax engine can. 🔮 Product vision: Indirect tax is just the start; we’re building the Deel for international billing. What you will do: Full-cycle sales: run outbound, close new logos, and expand existing accounts. Flex across segments: high-velocity SMB cycles and complex mid-market sales. Build GTM playbooks, assets, and revops stack with the Founder. Help shape and scale our global sales team. What’s important to us: Hunter: Grit > pedigree. Fast shipper: If it can be done today, do it today. Self-starter: No hand-holding Experience in a quota-carrying role with a track record of exceeding sales targets. In-person: SF only. Requirements: Proven experience selling B2B SaaS into SMB and mid-market segments. Early-stage startup experience (building processes from scratch). Nice to have: Experience selling to the CFO / Finance roles

ABOUT SPHERE Every breakthrough in trade infrastructure has followed the same pattern: reduce a transaction cost, expand the market. Containerization for goods. SWIFT for money. Stripe for payments. Compliance is one of the last and largest — and the hardest, because trade rules aren't data to be looked up. They're a complex adaptive system with 190+ sovereign jurisdictions, in different languages, changing constantly, reacting to each other. Sphere built the system that solves it. Our AI (TRAM) ingests global trade law, interprets it, resolves conflicts across jurisdictions, and produces compliance determinations more reliable than human experts. We handle the entire lifecycle — calculation, registration, filing, remittance — at millisecond latency with zero downtime. Backed by a16z and YC. $21M Series A, 30%+ month-over-month growth, customers include ElevenLabs, Replit, Deel, Runway, and Lovable. Small team, global surface area. Everyone owns a domain that would be a full team at a larger company. San Francisco, five days in office. The problem keeps compounding. Expanding into input tax, withholding, e-invoicing, tariffs — each multiplies the complexity. Tens of millions of transactions today, billions ahead. THE ROLE As the Founding Forward Deployed Engineer at Sphere, you’ll embed directly with Sphere's most strategic customers to understand their cross-border business workflows, identify the highest-impact compliance challenges, and design and deliver custom solutions that make Sphere fit seamlessly into their operations. You won't just be executing a playbook, you'll be defining it as you go. Working directly with our Founder, Engineering team, and GTM teams, you'll define how Sphere shows up in customer environments and shape what the forward-deployed motion looks like as we scale. This is a rare opportunity to have an outsized influence on both the product and the customer experience. This role is ideal for engineers who thrive on owning problems end-to-end, from discovery to deployment, and who are energized by the challenge of translating intricate, jurisdiction-specific regulatory requirements into elegant, production-grade software. We're looking for someone who is as comfortable in a customer conversation as they are in a codebase, and who brings the same rigor to building internal processes as they do to solving customer problems. WHAT YOU'LL DO Enablement Onboard customers pre-contract, get accounts functional in Sphere Navigate customer billing system integrations Pull and interpret liability reports, help customers understand exposure Guide clients through the complexity of understanding and managing their global tax liability Guide customers through VAT ID collection, address hygiene, and regional compliance Monetization Bridge between customer needs and the engineering roadmap Be entrenched with the customer by ensuring Sphere is integral to all of the company’s revenue compliance needs Research new compliance requirements (e-invoicing, input tax, etc.) end to end Identify patterns across customers - what custom work is being requested repeatedly Scope and write tight technical PRDs/proposals ready to hand to core engineering Build custom features and integrations on top of the Sphere platform for key accounts Identify custom builds that could be scaled and deployed across all customers as new features or products REQUIREMENTS Experience in an FDE or customer-facing engineering role. Experience executing and shipping bespoke customer features, end-to-end. Ownership. Takes a problem from ambiguous to shipped without being told how, keeps the customer outcome in sight the whole way, and doesn't drop threads. Relentlessly curious. You don't wait to be pointed at the answer - you go find it, and you know when to pull in someone who knows more than you. Strong communication skills. We work at an extremely fast pace, so clear, concise communication is essential. Cu

Sphere has built the world’s first AI-native tax engine that helps companies like Lovable, Eleven Labs, Replit, Runway AI, Windsurf (+ many more) automate their sales tax, VAT and GST obligations: We're growing rapidly (34%+ MoM revenue growth) and helping the fastest growing tech companies around the world including Lovable, Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf, Fathom, Linktree, Photoroom, Sierra AI, Zed etc We’ve spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes (no other vendor has done this) We're building the world's first AI-native tax engine (which will be the foundation for a broader cross border compliance platform; think Deel for international billing) We're well funded by Andreessen Horowitz, YC and Felicis Ventures Sphere is looking for an AI engineer to help build out its proprietary Tax Review and Assessment Model (TRAM) across jurisdictions and other compliance areas. You will be pushing the frontiers of what's possible with AI in the finance space and building the core piece of technology that shape the future of Sphere. Why this is a massive opportunity: 🌍 Massive TAM: Every business around the world needs this. Compliance isn’t optional. 🌬️ Strong macro tailwinds: Businesses are expanding globally at a faster pace, while tax authorities are cracking down on cross-border compliance, driving urgent demand. ✨ AI advantage: Incumbents can’t scale beyond the U.S.; our AI-native tax engine can. 🔮 Product vision: Indirect tax is just the start; we’re building the Deel for international billing. What you will do: Within weeks: Lead development of new features aimed at increasing TRAM’s test-time accuracy Work on the underlying data and retrieval pipelines that help power our AI workflows Work directly with our internal tax experts to understand how TRAM can better reason like them Within months: Own TRAM’s eval framework and workflows Work directly with leading frontier labs to reinforce fine tune models on our proprietary data Requirements: Prior experience building AI enabled products, particularly RAG systems Experience fine tuning base models, ideally via RFT Willingness to dive into tax technical problems - if you aren’t willing to dive deep on how the model should reason through the tax research process you won’t be effective A strong understanding of how LLMs and reasoning models function Nice to have: Experience working with LLMs on legal applications Experience with RAG data pipelines and collecting/curating data for the pipeline What’s important to us: The Dog: Grit > pedigree. Ship fast: If it can be done today, do it today. Self-starter: No hand-holding Accountability: You’ll be held accountable to objective, measurable targets each month. In-person: SF only.

Mission: Sphere has built the world’s first AI-native tax engine that helps companies like Eleven Labs, Replit, Runway AI, Windsurf (+ many more) automate their sales tax, VAT and GST obligations: We're growing rapidly (34%+ MoM revenue growth) and helping the fastest growing tech companies around the world including Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf, Fathom, Linktree, Photoroom, Sierra AI, Zed etc We’ve spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes (no other vendor has done this) We're building the world's first AI-native tax engine (which will be the foundation for a broader cross border compliance platform; think Deel for international billing) We're well funded by Felicis Ventures and YC A crucial part of Sphere’s platform involves integrating with customer billing systems (e.g. Stripe, Chargebee, Rillet, Campfire and many more) and ingesting large volumes of transaction data across customers around the world. As we scale, the need for a uniform data pipeline across these integrations is mission critical and will allow us to service more customers in different industries, with different billing systems and processes. Why this is a massive opportunity: 🌍 Massive TAM: Every business around the world needs this. Compliance isn’t optional. 🌬️ Strong macro tailwinds: Businesses are expanding globally at a faster pace, while tax authorities are cracking down on cross-border compliance, driving urgent demand. ✨ AI advantage: Incumbents can’t scale beyond the U.S.; our AI-native tax engine can. 🔮 Product vision: Indirect tax is just the start; we’re building the Deel for international billing. What you will do: Within weeks: Own all billing integrations across billing providers (Stripe, Chargebee), ERPs (Rillet, Campfire) and our standalone API Architect plans for a uniform data pipeline that will manage ingestion and storage of >1B records across different billing providers Define a uniform data model to store all transaction-related data Work directly with some of the fastest growing companies in the world - including Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf on their billing set up Within months:  Execute and build out the data pipeline Build out new integrations that will plug into our standardized data pipeline  Optimize data pipeline / integrations for speed and efficiency (reduce syncing time) Begin designing the next evolution of the data warehouse for analytics What’s important to us: The Dog: Grit > pedigree. Ship fast: If it can be done today, do it today. Self-starter: No hand-holding Accountability: You’ll be held accountable to objective, measurable targets each month. In-person: SF only. Requirements:  Strong experience in Python. Our core application backend and data pipeline services are built with Python and Django Strong skills in designing, architecting, and building data systems from the ground up Very strong attention to detail. When you work with numbers this is non-negotiable - it’s not enough to be 99% right. You're almost as much a data engineer as you are a software engineer. You've used the tools of the modern data stack but you've also built complex software from the ground up Nice to have: Experience working with large volumes of transaction data. You’ll be getting very familiar with it! Experience working with billing systems (Stripe, Chargebee, Netsuite etc) Experience with Django or Python ORM While infrastructure may not be your primary focus, you’re not afraid to spin up extra infrastructure components / resources.

Mission: Sphere has built the world’s first AI-native tax engine that helps companies like Eleven Labs, Replit, Runway AI, Windsurf (+ many more) automate their sales tax, VAT and GST obligations: We're growing rapidly (34%+ MoM revenue growth) and helping the fastest growing tech companies around the world including Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf, Fathom, Linktree, Photoroom, Sierra AI, Zed etc We’ve spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes (no other vendor has done this) We're building the world's first AI-native tax engine (which will be the foundation for a broader cross border compliance platform; think Deel for international billing) We're well funded by Felicis Ventures and YC   As Sphere scales to support millions of customer transactions globally, the need for scalable infrastructure to support transaction syncing and live tax calculation within checkout and invoices is paramount. Given we are a key part of mission critical billing flows for some of the fastest growing companies in the world, availability, resilience and speed are all key areas of focus that this role would be responsible for Why this is a massive opportunity: 🌍 Massive TAM: Every business around the world needs this. Compliance isn’t optional. 🌬️ Strong macro tailwinds: Businesses are expanding globally at a faster pace, while tax authorities are cracking down on cross-border compliance, driving urgent demand. ✨ AI advantage: Incumbents can’t scale beyond the U.S.; our AI-native tax engine can. 🔮 Product vision: Indirect tax is just the start; we’re building the Deel for international billing. What you will do: Within weeks:  Find solutions to Sphere's toughest scaling, performance, and latency problems Work closely with engineering teamdevelopers to define tooling to help us ship even faster Participate in an On Call rotation to solve critical production events Work directly with customers like Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf, and partners like Stripe, Chargebee, on their latency and availability requirements. Within months: Influence and implement the next generation of Sphere's database, real-time queue, and container orchestration infrastructure Work across our engineering organization to introduce and scale best practices with cloud-native technologies like Amazon ALB, ECS/EKS, Temporal, AWS SQS, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Elasticache Redis, and S3 Build abstractions within Terraform to simplify the architecture and increase velocity and ownership What’s important to us: The Dog: Grit > pedigree. Ship fast: If it can be done today, do it today. Self-starter: No hand-holding Accountability: You’ll be held accountable to objective, measurable targets each month. In-person: SF only. Requirements:  Experience managing k8s clusters in AWS/GCP/Azure at scale Extensive experience shipping high-quality architectures for mission critical systems (focus on high availability, high load, low latency) Experience with Postgres at scale Nice to have: Experience working with large volumes of transaction data. You’ll be getting very familiar with it! Strong experience in Python. Our core application backend and data pipeline services are built with Python and Django Passionate about developer experience   Very strong attention to detail. When you work with numbers this is a non-negotiable - it’s not enough to be 99% right.

Mission Sphere has built the world’s first AI-native tax engine that helps companies like Eleven Labs, Replit, Runway AI, Windsurf (+ many more) automate their sales tax, VAT and GST obligations: We're growing rapidly (34%+ MoM revenue growth) and helping the fastest growing tech companies around the world including Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf, Fathom, Linktree, Photoroom, Sierra AI, Zed etc We’ve spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes (no other vendor has done this) We're building the world's first AI-native tax engine (which will be the foundation for a broader cross border compliance platform; think Deel for international billing) We're well funded by Felicis Ventures and YC Sphere is looking for a passionate product engineer to help build out new features / products on our roadmap and take our customer experience to the next level. They’ll be working directly with customers, our design and eng team as well as our CEO / Founder to bring Sphere’s product vision of becoming the world’s first cross-border compliance engine to life Why this is a massive opportunity: 🌍 Massive TAM: Every business around the world needs this. Compliance isn’t optional. 🌬️ Strong macro tailwinds: Businesses are expanding globally at a faster pace, while tax authorities are cracking down on cross-border compliance, driving urgent demand. ✨ AI advantage: Incumbents can’t scale beyond the U.S.; our AI-native tax engine can. 🔮 Product vision: Indirect tax is just the start; we’re building the Deel for international billing. What you will do: Within weeks:  Work / listen to many of our customers on what their main pain points are and prioritize lowest hanging fruit features that can help solve their problems Collaborate extensively with design on bringing those features to life  Executing and shipping features, end-to-end, on a daily basis  Doing customer support where necessary to understand our customers and how they think as much as possible Within months:  Own our feature / product roadmap in conjunction with the CEO / Founder (you will work a lot together) Build / implement more rigorous customer feedback / analysis processes to allow us to better prioritize roadmap What’s important to us: The Dog: Grit > pedigree. Ship fast: If it can be done today, do it today. Self-starter: No hand-holding Accountability: You’ll be held accountable to objective, measurable targets each month. In-person: SF only. Requirements:  Strong experience with React. Our entire front end is built in react. Strong experience with Figma. In order to collaborate efficiently with design. Customer obsession. You’re going to be talking to a lot of people in the finance realm (Controller, Heads of Finance, Heads of Tax). You need to like them and obsess over them. Very strong attention to detail. When you work with numbers this is a non-negotiable - it’s not enough to be 99% right. Strong organization skills. We get hundreds of feature requests every day. How you monitor, organize and prioritize these is key. Nice to have: Experience working with large volumes of transaction data. You’ll be getting very familiar with it! Experience in Python and Django. Our core application backend and data pipeline services are built with Python and Django Experience using tools like PostHog and Sentry

Mission: Sphere has built the world’s first AI-native tax engine that helps companies like Eleven Labs, Replit, Runway AI, Windsurf (+ many more) automate their sales tax, VAT and GST obligations: We're growing rapidly (34%+ MoM revenue growth) and helping the fastest growing tech companies around the world including Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf, Fathom, Linktree, Photoroom, Sierra AI, Zed etc We’ve spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes (no other vendor has done this) We're building the world's first AI-native tax engine (which will be the foundation for a broader cross border compliance platform; think Deel for international billing) We're well funded by Felicis Ventures and YC Sphere is looking for a versatile full stack engineer who can jump on different mission critical areas to help accelerate its production - e.g. filing infrastructure, tax engine and new product areas (input tax, withholding tax, e-invoicing).  These areas are key levers towards scaling Sphere and growing ARR, meaning that your work will have a direct impact on the growth of the business Why this is a massive opportunity: 🌍 Massive TAM: Every business around the world needs this. Compliance isn’t optional. 🌬️ Strong macro tailwinds: Businesses are expanding globally at a faster pace, while tax authorities are cracking down on cross-border compliance, driving urgent demand. ✨ AI advantage: Incumbents can’t scale beyond the U.S.; our AI-native tax engine can. 🔮 Product vision: Indirect tax is just the start; we’re building the Deel for international billing. What you will do: Within weeks:  Ship features related to a key component of Sphere’s platform - e.g. filing infrastructure  Own and manage this key component, driving measurable outcomes  Work directly with customers like Eleven Labs, Replit and Windsurf to improve / optimize that key component of the platform (e.g. improve filing generation and submission speed [x]%) Within months: Develop expertise across other key components of Sphere’s platform - e.g. tax engine, new products - to manage and execute improvements in this area  Lead / mentor additional engineers in component areas that you have worked in What’s important to us: The Dog: Grit > pedigree. Ship fast: If it can be done today, do it today. Self-starter: No hand-holding Accountability: You’ll be held accountable to objective, measurable targets each month. In-person: SF only. Requirements:  Strong experience in Python . Our core application backend and data pipeline services are built with Python and Django While frontend / React may not be your primary focus, you’re not afraid to dive in when needed Very strong attention to detail. When you work with numbers this is a non-negotiable - it’s not enough to be 99% right. Nice to have: Experience working with large volumes of transaction data. You’ll be getting very familiar with it! Experience with Django or Python ORM