TRAM Lead · Sphere

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:13:30 GMT
Finance

Sphere · San Francisco HQ · remote

About Sphere

Every breakthrough in trade infrastructure has followed the same pattern: reduce a transaction cost, expand the market. 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.

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.

Responsibilities

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.

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)