Director, Tax

About the role

The Director, Tax will stand up the tax function from foundation and run it through our first external audit and into public markets. They will be responsible for setting the tax positions, defining the operating model, and building the international and domestic tax foundation.

Responsibilities

• Stand up the tax function from foundation
• Own the multi-state nexus picture - payroll, customer, and economic nexus across remote workforce and customer footprint
• Build the registration and compliance roadmap and execute it
• Define and defend US federal tax positions - R&D credit (41), 174, capitalized software, equity comp deductions, pre-IPO restructuring
• Build the international tax foundation - transfer pricing model and intercompany agreements, IP location and migration, GILTI/FDII, entity structure, permanent establishment risk
• Build the sales and use tax operating model - taxability, nexus monitoring, registrations, returns, exemption certificates
• Quarterback external tax advisors - direct, scope, and decide what stays in-house
• Prepare or rebuild tax provisions, footnotes, and disclosures from scratch
• Manage external auditors and tax consultants - scope, direct, push back
• Write scripts for automation - nexus monitoring, provision tie-outs, exposure modeling, pulling structured data from messy sources
• Translate tax for non-tax stakeholders without losing precision
• Use AI extensively - research, memo drafting, nexus analysis, transfer pricing benchmarking, peer disclosure scraping, workflow automation

Requirements

• Active CPA, JD with tax LLM, or MST
• Big 4 or national firm tax foundation
• 8+ years of progressive corporate tax experience
• Deep fluency in US federal and multi-state, plus hands-on international tax - transfer pricing, IP structuring, GILTI/FDII, intercompany
• Hands-on technical range across what'll define our audit and S-1 - federal positions including R&D credit and 174, multi-state SALT, indirect tax, equity-comp tax, ASC 740
• Experience preparing or rebuilding tax provisions, footnotes, and disclosures from scratch - not just reviewing them
• Experience managing external auditors and tax consultants - scope, direct, push back
• Comfortable with coding scripts and small automations (Python, SQL, or equivalent)
• Builder's instinct - comfort with ambiguity, no waiting for playbooks, strong bias to ship
• AI-native working style - use LLMs daily and can talk concretely about what they do well and where they fall short for tax
• Strong written and verbal communication - translate tax for non-tax stakeholders without losing precision
• High integrity, high ownership, low ego

Qualifications

• Prior experience preparing a company for its first external audit and S-1 / IPO
• Prior experience standing up an in-house tax function at a high-growth company
• SaaS or AI-business tax experience - capitalized software, sales tax for SaaS, customer-base international expansion
• Multi-state employee mobility, RSU/ISO equity-comp tax mobility, and 83(b) coordination at scale
• Working knowledge of provision tools (OneSource, Corptax, Longview), sales tax engines (Avalara, Anrok, Vertex), and research platforms - and strong opinions about them