---
title: 'AI Agent Infrastructure Lead at Sphere, Inc.'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-agent-infrastructure-lead-sphere-inc-san-francisco-m0w9sms8tqx9'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-18'
---

# AI Agent Infrastructure Lead at Sphere, Inc.

- **Company:** Sphere, Inc.
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $230k–$260k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-04-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-18
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sphere/9e1defbe-b135-4117-90b0-06548fa75fa7/application

**Skills:** Production-quality software development, AI agents, Coding agents, Internal developer tooling, AI agent enablement, Backend systems, Infrastructure, Local development environments, CI, Internal tools

> Lead internal AI agent enablement efforts by building systems and infrastructure that allow AI agents to safely and effectively increase velocity across engineering, ops, and other departments. Responsible for creating agent sandbox environments, workflows, and the internal AI agent layer.

## Job description

## 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, 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

Sphere is looking for an engineer to lead our internal AI agent enablement efforts. You’ll build the systems that let AI agents safely and effectively increase velocity across. Sphere, starting with engineering and expanding into ops, customer success, tax research, and implementation workflows.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

Within days

- Ship AI agent features that help Sphere’s engineering team use agents more effectively and responsibly.
- Iterate on versions of Sphere’s agent sandbox environments.
- Create workflows where agents can inspect the codebase, run local infrastructure, make changes, run tests, and prepare work for human review.
- Work directly with engineers to identify high-leverage internal workflows where agents can create immediate velocity.

Within months

- Lead Sphere’s internal efforts to enable AI agents to act more autonomously across engineering, ops, customer success, tax research, and implementation.
- Build “Goose” for Sphere: the internal AI agent layer that helps agents understand and operate across Sphere’s systems.
- Own the infrastructure, tooling, and workflows that let agents safely take on more complex internal work over time.
- Establish the patterns for how Sphere uses agents internally, including context, permissions, review, observability, and escalation.

## REQUIREMENTS

- Experience building production-quality software.
- Experience in AI agents, coding agents, internal developer tooling, or AI agent enablement.
- Comfort working across backend systems, infrastructure, local development environments, CI, and internal tools.
- Strong judgment around autonomy, safety, permissions, and human review.
- High agency. You can take a vague internal problem and turn it into a working system people actually use.
- Strong attention to detail. Agents are only useful here if they improve speed without reducing correctness.

## 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.
- Being in the room is a feature, not a cost. Being in SF isn't a policy, it's how the work gets done. The speed and density of collaboration we need doesn't survive over video.

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)

## About Sphere, Inc.

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Sphere automates global cross-border tax compliance (sales tax, VAT, GST) using an AI-native engine that reads and interprets tax law across 190+ countries.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2022 (estimated based on first venture round)
- **Founders**: Nicholas Rudder (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Tax compliance software, cross-border trade, financial infrastructure
- **Target customers**: B2B – mid-market to enterprise companies selling goods or services internationally (e.g., digital platforms, e‑commerce, SaaS)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Make the world one market" – reduce the compliance cost of every transaction to zero.

## Products & Services
- **Global Tax Compliance Platform**: End-to-end automation for sales tax, VAT, and GST across 100+ regions. Modules include registration, calculation & collection, filing & remittance, and monitoring.
- **Tax Review and Assessment Model (TRAM)**: Proprietary AI engine that reads unstructured legal text, reasons about how tax law applies, and produces determinations with full citations. Continuously ingests statute law, regulations, case law, and administrative guidance from official sources.
- **Local Rails to Tax Authorities**: Direct integrations with 100+ tax authorities worldwide for filing and remittance, enabling true end-to-end automation.
- **API & Integrations**: Plugs into major billing platforms and payroll providers; 24/7 Slack-based support from tax experts.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: $21M Series A (led by a16z, announced in 2024); annual revenue estimated at $1M (early-stage, fast-growing)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: a16z, Felicis Ventures, Y Combinator, Uncommon Capital; angel investors include founders of Go1, Lyft, BetterUp, Xendit, Flexport
- **Growth Signals**: Double-digit month-over-month revenue growth (stated on website); headcount grew ~88% YoY (LinkedIn, though now ~50 employees per company page); processing billions in transaction value; customers include ElevenLabs, Replit, Deel, Lovable, Granola, Fal, Linktree

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-native legal reasoning**: TRAM does multi-step analysis rather than keyword matching, enabling accurate determinations across constantly changing tax codes.
- **End-to-end via local rails**: No other platform offers direct filing and remittance into 100+ tax authorities globally.
- **Human-in-the-loop accuracy**: Every determination is reviewed by tax experts before production; 90% are approved automatically with median review under 10 seconds.
- **Built for complexity**: Designed to handle the adaptive system of 190+ sovereign tax jurisdictions that change frequently.

## Strategic Focus
- Expand coverage to additional jurisdictions and tax types (e.g., customs duties)
- Scale the platform to handle billions of transactions annually
- Deepen integrations with billing, e‑commerce, and payroll systems
- Continue building AI capabilities to monitor real-time law changes and flag affected determinations

## Why Work Here
- **Small team, massive impact**: ~50 people building infrastructure that will touch billions of transactions – "every new hire changes the company."
- **Culture of ownership and expertise**: Team includes experienced tax professionals, engineers, and operators; fast-paced, low bureaucracy.
- **Remote/hybrid/office**: Primarily in-office at San Francisco HQ (Built In lists on-site, remote roles also available for some positions).
- **Notable perks**: Early-stage equity, direct mentorship from founding team, chance to shape product and engineering culture from the ground up.
- **Growth trajectory**: Double-digit MoM revenue growth, backed by top-tier investors, and solving a massive ($200T+ cross-border goods/services) problem.

## Sources
1. [getsphere.com - About Us](https://www.getsphere.com/about-us)
2. [getsphere.com - Homepage](https://www.getsphere.com/)
3. [Built In - Sphere Careers](https://builtin.com/company/sphere-getspherecom)
4. [LinkedIn - Sphere](https://www.linkedin.com/company/getsphere)
5. [Ashby - Lead AI Engineer Job Posting](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sphere/4e3c5943-bd07-4ce1-8e13-68b00221d0b7)

## Other roles at Sphere, Inc.

- [Sales Development Representative](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-development-representative-sphere-inc-san-francisco-y5pnh008fjtr) — San Francisco, CA
- [Account Executive (SF)](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-sf-sphere-inc-san-francisco-vkpt1pz1mb64) — San Francisco, CA
- [TRAM Trainer - EMEA](https://feeny.ai/job/tram-trainer-emea-sphere-inc-europe-dh4m0dh8qzks) — Europe
- [TRAM Trainer](https://feeny.ai/job/tram-trainer-sphere-inc-united-states-ekzzt03xckgn) — United States
- [Tax Support Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/tax-support-specialist-sphere-inc-san-francisco-hqstcrhkm2mb) — San Francisco, CA
- [E-Invoicing Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/e-invoicing-lead-sphere-inc-united-states-t2p9stf2gbry) — United States
- [SALT Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/salt-lead-sphere-inc-united-states-4g46yrfh73cd) — United States
- [Technical GTME](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-gtme-sphere-inc-san-francisco-69yetm30p7jn) — San Francisco, CA
- [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-sphere-inc-san-francisco-q5veze8rzyty) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Backend Engineer (Infrastructure)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-backend-engineer-infrastructure-sphere-inc-san-francisco-22gm3nb6dxvy) — San Francisco, CA