Founding Recruiter
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 Recruiter in San Francisco to work closely with the Founder to help scale out our Engineering, Product, GTM, Ops and Tax team. You will be coming in as the first people hire and will have a blank canvas + support to help scale the team, processes and systems to build a global, generational company.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
Help 3x our team size in the next 12 months - there will be a particular focus on engineering / product hiring.
Planning and executing on hiring-related marketing campaigns - sourcing and scheduling hiring events, social content and outbound campaigns, managing external recruiters to drive Sphere's top of funnel for candidates.
Build the foundations around our hiring process - sourcing, onboarding, performance evaluation and more
Enhance our internal culture - office build-out (703 Market Street), weekly rituals, offsites etc
REQUIREMENTS
Proven experience building out early stage teams - especially engineering teams.
Strong network in the engineering community - ideally SF's engineering community
NICE TO HAVES
You have experience as both an internal and external recruiter
You have a presence on social media and can drive engagement (i.e. you're vocal)
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