Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

Enablement
Onboard customers pre-contract, get accounts functional in Sphere
Navigate customer billing system integrations
Pull and interpret liability reports, help customers understand exposure
Guide clients through the complexity of understanding and managing their global tax liability
Guide customers through VAT ID collection, address hygiene, and regional compliance
Monetization
Bridge between customer needs and the engineering roadmap
Entrenched with the customer by ensuring Sphere is integral to all of the company’s revenue compliance needs
Research new compliance requirements (e-invoicing, input tax, etc.) end to end
Identify patterns across customers - what custom work is being requested repeatedly
Scope and write tight technical PRDs/proposals ready to hand to core engineering
Build custom features and integrations on top of the Sphere platform for key accounts
Identify custom builds that could be scaled and deployed across all customers as new features or products

Requirements

• Experience in an FDE or customer-facing engineering role.
• Experience executing and shipping bespoke customer features, end-to-end.
• Ownership. Takes a problem from ambiguous to shipped without being told how, keeps the customer outcome in sight the whole way, and doesn't drop threads.
• Relentlessly curious. You don't wait to be pointed at the answer - you go find it, and you know when to pull in someone who knows more than you.
• Strong communication skills. We work at an extremely fast pace, so clear, concise communication is essential.
• Customer obsession. You’re going to be talking to a lot of people in the finance realm (Controller, Heads of Finance, Heads of Tax). You need to like them and obsess over them.
• Very strong attention to detail. When you work with numbers, this is a non-negotiable - it’s not enough to be 99% right.

Nice to haves

• Experience working with large volumes of transaction data.
• You’ll be getting very familiar with it!
• Experience in Python and Django. Our core application backend and data pipeline services are built with Python and Django.
• Experience with React. Our entire front end is built in React.

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.