{"id":69187,"url":"https://alion.io/job/sphere-ai-agent-infrastructure-lead","title":"AI Agent Infrastructure Lead","company":{"id":28817,"name":"Sphere","domain":"sphere.com.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/sphere-com-ai","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":56,"open_postings":15,"ghost_share":0.733,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-11-08T05:47:12Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":220000,"max":280000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":280000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"ElevenLabs","optional":false},{"name":"Lovable","optional":false},{"name":"Replit","optional":false},{"name":"Runway","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-04-28T01:17:10Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-04-28","last_verified_at":"2026-11-08T12:22:42Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":194,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":1,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":194},"description":"ABOUT SPHERE\nEvery 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.\nSphere 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.\nBacked by a16z and YC. $21M Series A, 30%+ month-over-month growth, customers include ElevenLabs, Replit, Deel, Runway, and Lovable.\n\nSmall team, global surface area. Everyone owns a domain that would be a full team at a larger company. San Francisco, in office.\n\nThe problem keeps compounding. Expanding into input tax, withholding, e-invoicing, tariffs - each multiplies the complexity. Tens of millions of transactions today, billions ahead.\n\nTHE ROLE\nSphere is looking for an engineer to lead our internal AI agent enablement efforts. You’ll build the systems that let AI agents safely and effectively increase velocity across. Sphere, starting with engineering and expanding into ops, customer success, tax research, and implementation workflows.\nWHAT YOU'LL DO\nWithin days\nShip AI agent features that help Sphere’s engineering team use agents more effectively and responsibly.\n\nIterate on versions of Sphere’s agent sandbox environments.\n\nCreate workflows where agents can inspect the codebase, run local infrastructure, make changes, run tests, and prepare work for human review.\n\nWork directly with engineers to identify high-leverage internal workflows where agents can create immediate velocity.\n\nWithin months\nLead Sphere’s internal efforts to enable AI agents to act more autonomously across engineering, ops, customer success, tax research, and implementation.\n\nBuild “Goose” for Sphere: the internal AI agent layer that helps agents understand and operate across Sphere’s systems.\n\nOwn the infrastructure, tooling, and workflows that let agents safely take on more complex internal work over time.\n\nEstablish the patterns for how Sphere uses agents internally, including context, permissions, review, observability, and escalation.\n\nREQUIREMENTS\nExperience building production-quality software.\n\nExperience in AI agents, coding agents, internal developer tooling, or AI agent enablement.\n\nComfort working across backend systems, infrastructure, local development environments, CI, and internal tools.\n\nStrong judgment around autonomy, safety, permissions, and human review.\n\nHigh agency. You can take a vague internal problem and turn it into a working system people actually use.\n\nStrong attention to detail. Agents are only useful here if they improve speed without reducing correctness.\n\nWHO YOU ARE\nYou'll thrive here if:\nYou'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.\n\nEarly 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.\n\nYou 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.\n\nYou 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.\n\nBeing 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.\n\nThis won't be a fit if:\nYou need structure handed to you or ambiguity feels draining rather than motivating\n\nYou want to manage people more than own hard problems (we're a flat, experienced team - everyone builds)\n\nYou're used to \"good enough\" shipping (small errors have outsized impact here)","description_format":"text","description_chars":4457,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["RegTech, AML & Compliance","Accounting & Tax Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-04-28T01:17:10Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-08-21T21:12:35Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-09-05T19:07:27Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":5,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.172,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":194,"expected_fill_days":28,"reasons":["conf:1","stale_co","ghost","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-08T05:47:12Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":280000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/sphere-ai-agent-infrastructure-lead","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/sphere-ai-agent-infrastructure-lead.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-08T14:29:30Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":30628,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-09T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":28817},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=28817"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fsphere-ai-agent-infrastructure-lead"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fsphere-ai-agent-infrastructure-lead"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fsphere-ai-agent-infrastructure-lead"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/sphere-ai-agent-infrastructure-lead\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsphere-ai-agent-infrastructure-lead"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":69187}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"sphere.com.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":69187},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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