VAT 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’re looking for an international VAT / GST subject matter expert to work with our AI, engineering, and tax teams to help further expand our international capabilities.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Be the go-to indirect tax expert for internationally based businesses selling cross-border.

• Collaborate with the AI team and engineering to maintain and expand our AI-native, global tax engine, enabling support for new products and jurisdictions.

• Help our systems track global regulatory changes and translate them into simple, actionable solutions for our clients.

• Push the frontiers of AI technology to help redefine tax research

REQUIREMENTS

• Deep expertise in global VAT, with a focus on cross-border transactions across EMEA.

• Hands-on experience with global tax engines, ERP/tax integrations, and indirect tax technology platforms.

• Proven ability to work cross-functionally with Engineering, Product, and system integrators to implement scalable tax solutions.

• Skilled at interpreting complex foreign tax regulations and translating them into structured, automatable tax logic.

NICE TO HAVES

• Prior or active relationships with government authorities

• LATAM, Canada, or APAC experience

• Previous startup experience

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)