Tax Operations Specialist

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

We're looking for a Tax Operations Specialist to partner with our Customer Success team and help customers successfully navigate complex tax compliance requirements using our platform.

In this role, you'll serve as a tax subject matter expert and trusted partner to customers, helping them understand tax requirements, troubleshoot compliance workflows, and optimize their use of our technology. You'll work closely with Customer Success, Product, Engineering, and Tax teams to translate customer needs into actionable insights and scalable solutions.

This role is ideal for someone who combines strong tax knowledge with excellent communication skills and enjoys solving customer problems through a mix of technical understanding, operational expertise, and collaboration.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Within days:

• Develop a deep understanding of our tax platform, customer workflows, and product capabilities.

• Build relationships with Customer Success, Sales, Product, Engineering, and Tax teams.

• Learn our customers' tax compliance needs, common challenges, and implementation workflows.

• Become a trusted internal resource for tax-related customer questions and escalations.

• Review existing customer processes and identifying opportunities to improve the customer experience.

Within months:

• Partner with our Customer Success Lead to support customer implementations, onboarding, and ongoing success.

• Serve as a tax SME for customer conversations involving compliance requirements, filing processes, and tax workflows.

• Help customers understand how our platform supports their tax obligations and business needs.

• Troubleshoot complex customer issues by collaborating with internal Tax, Product, Engineering, and Operations teams.

• Translating customer feedback and pain points into product improvement opportunities.

• Support customer escalations and help drive issues to resolution.

• Create customer-facing documentation, enablement materials, and best practices.

• Identifying patterns across customer needs and partnering with internal teams to improve processes and product capabilities.

• Support strategic customer initiatives, including new country launches, regulatory changes, and new product offerings.

REQUIREMENTS

• 4+ years of experience in tax operations, tax compliance, indirect tax, accounting operations, or a related field.

• Strong understanding of indirect tax compliance processes and operational workflows.

• Experience working with customers, stakeholders, or cross-functional teams.

• Ability to explain complex tax concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with excellent attention to detail.

• Ability to manage multiple priorities and customer needs in a fast-paced environment.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

• Comfortable partnering with Product and Engineering teams to resolve issues and improve processes.

NICE TO HAVES

• Experience working at a tax technology, SaaS, fintech, ERP, or financial software company.

• Experience supporting enterprise customers or complex implementations.

• Experience with tax automation platforms such as Avalara, Vertex, Sovos, or similar solutions.

• Familiarity with APIs, integrations, or technical implementations.

• Experience creating customer-facing documentation or enablement materials.

• Experience working with Customer Success or Professional Services teams.

• CPA, MST, CMI, or other relevant tax/accounting certification.

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)