TRAM Lead

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

We are seeking a highly experienced tax professional to serve as the bridge between tax domain expertise and AI/engineering teams. This role will oversee the development and validation of our AI-driven tax engine, TRAM, by guiding research teams, refining tax logic, and ensuring the system produces accurate, defensible outcomes.

You will play a critical role in shaping how tax knowledge is structured, interpreted, and deployed within an AI system—ultimately influencing the future of automated tax compliance.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Within days:

• Serve as the internal subject matter expert across indirect taxes (sales tax, VAT, GST)

• Act as the primary liaison between Tax, Engineering, and Product teams

• Contribute to taxonomy design for tax data

• Provide expert feedback on TRAM generated determinations and monitoring results

Within months:

• Manage and oversee team of TRAM trainers who will collect ongoing expert feedback that will be used to finetune TRAM and build on Sphere’s data moat

• Partner with product leadership to define roadmap priorities for TRAM (including sourcing, new product categories, input tax, withholding tax tariffs and more)

• Develop scalable frameworks for representing tax logic across jurisdictions

REQUIREMENTS

• Worked at the intersection of product and tax - the challenge of abstracting complex tax systems into a user friendly product excites you

• Deep understanding of compliance processes, reconciliations, and controls

• Global mindset - we didn’t build Sphere as a US centric product. We built with an international mindset. We want people who join us to think the same way.

• High attention to detail - one of our key values is ‘Sweating the details’ and it is essential in our business

• 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

WHO YOU ARE

You'll thrive here if:

• You're a Dog. You've been underestimated, gone through struggle, and never stopped running. You have a chip on your shoulder and enormous drive. You look at Stripe, Deel, and Flexport all punting on compliance and think: good, that means the opportunity is ours. Hunger beats pedigree.

• Early stage is in your bones. You've built things where there's no playbook and nobody handing you the answer. You define the problem instead of waiting for instructions.

• You own it end to end. Give you a goal and you figure out your own path. Small team, global surface area — everyone owns a domain that would be a full team at a larger company. No one tells you how.

• You believe speed and accuracy are both possible. We're building a complex product that requires robustness and 100% uptime, and we have to build at our customers' pace. Move fast. Don't break things. Both.

This won't be a fit if:

• You need structure handed to you or ambiguity feels draining rather than motivating

• You want to manage people more than own hard problems (we're a flat, experienced team — everyone builds)

• You're used to "good enough" shipping (small errors have outsized impact here)