---
title: 'Founding Growth Lead at Sphere, Inc.'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-growth-lead-sphere-inc-san-francisco-m8w0qg3qtsna'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Founding Growth Lead at Sphere, Inc.

- **Company:** Sphere, Inc.
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $220k–$260k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-01-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sphere/52104e06-f4b8-43c3-8591-ac9a7ab56ac1/application

**Skills:** B2C or B2B software platform growth, Social media marketing, SEO, Product-led growth, Influencer advertising, Partnership development, International GTM strategy

> Join Sphere as a Founding Growth Lead in San Francisco to build direct and partner channels, establish international GTM operations, and drive the company toward $100M+ ARR. This role requires building processes from scratch in an early-stage startup environment.

## 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, 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

Sphere is looking for a Founding Growth Lead based in San Francisco to work closely with the Founder to help amplify our brand messaging, build out our direct and partner channels, establish our presence in numerous international markets and take us to $100m+ in ARR.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Fuel and build out our direct channels:
- Socials: Drive our content strategy across the org and streamline our branding / messaging across social channels / review platforms.
- SEO: Continue to build upon our strong SEO growth with our fabulous SEO advisor (Irina Maltseva https://www.linkedin.com/in/irinamaltseva/)
- Product led: Work with engineering to build growth loops into our product (30% of our current inbound leads come from existing customer referrals).
- Other: We have exciting ideas around OOH / influencer advertising that we want to execute on
- Build out partner channels: We get 35% of our inbound leads from partners (accounting / tax firms, other fintech software providers). We want to double down on that in the US and especially internationally.
- Set up international GTM operations: What we do best is international and it continues to be our strategic focus into 2026. You'll need to help build out our growth channels in these regions and may even set up there for a period of time.

## REQUIREMENTS

- Proven experience build out growth channels in a B2C or B2B software platform.
- Early-stage startup experience (building processes from scratch).
- You have a presence on social media and can drive engagement (i.e. you're vocal)

## NICE TO HAVES

- A network in the CFO / finance / accounting community.

## 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. Five days 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)
- Being in the room five days a week feels like a cost instead of a benefit

## 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
- [Videographer and Content Creator](https://feeny.ai/job/videographer-and-content-creator-sphere-inc-san-francisco-5xnh5rb3948q) — 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
- [GTM Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/gtm-engineer-sphere-inc-san-francisco-69yetm30p7jn) — San Francisco, CA
- [AI Agent Infrastructure Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-agent-infrastructure-lead-sphere-inc-san-francisco-m0w9sms8tqx9) — San Francisco, CA