Senior Backend Engineer (Data)

About the role

Mission:

Sphere has built the world’s first AI-native tax engine that helps companies like Eleven Labs, Replit, Runway AI, Windsurf (+ many more) automate their sales tax, VAT and GST obligations:

• We're growing rapidly (34%+ MoM revenue growth) and helping the fastest growing tech companies around the world including Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf, Fathom, Linktree, Photoroom, Sierra AI, Zed etc

• We’ve spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes (no other vendor has done this)

• We're building the world's first AI-native tax engine (which will be the foundation for a broader cross border compliance platform; think Deel for international billing)

• We're well funded by Felicis Ventures and YC

A crucial part of Sphere’s platform involves integrating with customer billing systems (e.g. Stripe, Chargebee, Rillet, Campfire and many more) and ingesting large volumes of transaction data across customers around the world.

As we scale, the need for a uniform data pipeline across these integrations is mission critical and will allow us to service more customers in different industries, with different billing systems and processes.

Why this is a massive opportunity:

🌍 Massive TAM: Every business around the world needs this. Compliance isn’t optional.

🌬️ Strong macro tailwinds: Businesses are expanding globally at a faster pace, while tax authorities are cracking down on cross-border compliance, driving urgent demand.

✨ AI advantage: Incumbents can’t scale beyond the U.S.; our AI-native tax engine can.

🔮 Product vision: Indirect tax is just the start; we’re building the Deel for international billing.

What you will do:

Within weeks:

• Own all billing integrations across billing providers (Stripe, Chargebee), ERPs (Rillet, Campfire) and our standalone API

• Architect plans for a uniform data pipeline that will manage ingestion and storage of >1B records across different billing providers

• Define a uniform data model to store all transaction-related data

• Work directly with some of the fastest growing companies in the world - including Eleven Labs, Replit, Windsurf on their billing set up

Within months:

• Execute and build out the data pipeline

• Build out new integrations that will plug into our standardized data pipeline

• Optimize data pipeline / integrations for speed and efficiency (reduce syncing time)

• Begin designing the next evolution of the data warehouse for analytics
  

What’s important to us:

• The Dog: Grit > pedigree.

• Ship fast: If it can be done today, do it today.

• Self-starter: No hand-holding

• Accountability: You’ll be held accountable to objective, measurable targets each month.

• In-person: SF only.
  

Requirements:

• Strong experience in Python. Our core application backend and data pipeline services are built with Python and Django

• Strong skills in designing, architecting, and building data systems from the ground up

• Very strong attention to detail. When you work with numbers this is non-negotiable - it’s not enough to be 99% right.

• You're almost as much a data engineer as you are a software engineer. You've used the tools of the modern data stack but you've also built complex software from the ground up

Nice to have:

• Experience working with large volumes of transaction data. You’ll be getting very familiar with it!

• Experience working with billing systems (Stripe, Chargebee, Netsuite etc)

• Experience with Django or Python ORM

• While infrastructure may not be your primary focus, you’re not afraid to spin up extra infrastructure components / resources.
  

About Sphere

Sphere is an AI-powered cross-border tax compliance platform. We help companies like Eleven Labs, Replit and Windsurf automate their sales tax, VAT, GST compliance obligations.

What makes us different to other vendors on the market is:

1. we have spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes (no other vendor has done this), and

2. we're building the world's first AI-native tax engine (which will be the foundation for a broader cross border compliance platform; think Deel for international billing).