TL;DR: Build generalised computer-use and a knowledge graph of all the bad people in the world using Python, LLMs, VLMs and traditional ML.

About Us (i.e. Why This Is Going to the Moon)

Sphinx is a well-funded YC startup from the F24 batch. We’re using AI agents to automate the manual work of compliance officers in banks and fintechs – an area where financial institutions spend $30B annually. Our AI agents have already reduced manual reviews by 87% in some cases, all at a fraction of the cost.

Our vision is to build the future of compliance in financial services. We’re using AI agents to turn compliance into just another back-office automation. While doing so, we’re building the largest risk network ever – and setting the stage to solve an even bigger problem: identity. But more on that later.

The Team (i.e. The Dream Team)

Alex (a.k.a. Mr. CEO): Built a system saving Amazon $12M a year as an 18-year-old intern and conducted AI research on LLM hallucinations at MIT. He’ll sell ice cubes to eskimos if he needs to.

Chris (Whiteboard Dude): First employee and Head of Engineering at RelyComply, where he scaled the company from $0 to $12M ARR. Before that, he was a professional DOTA player.

Together, we founded and exited Adorno AI, an audio generation startup, before starting Sphinx.

Role (i.e. What We’re Looking For)

We’re looking for Sphinx’s first founding engineer – this is an incredible opportunity to join a scrappy, driven team taking on an industry that hasn’t evolved since fax machines.

As employee #1, you’ll work directly with us (the founders) from day one to shape the future of the company. You’ll make key technical decisions, build the product, and help assemble a team of A-players.

Here’s What We’re Looking For

No ego: Company > team > self.
Love working hard: This isn’t a “chill” job – it will be intense, demanding, and incredibly rewarding.
Cracked engineer: You write clean, scalable code, solve complex problems, and understand how to build systems that last.
Client-Driven: We don’t code in the dark. Everything we build is 100% based on client need – we’re here to “build something people want.”
Ownership: You don’t wait for permission – you see problems, solve them, and own the outcome.
If this sounds like you, let’s build something great together.

Responsibilities (i.e. What The Hell You’ll Be Doing)

There are two big endeavors Sphinx is working on:

A Generalizable Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Agent
Operating in an industry where mistakes cost a minimum of $250k.
Think Claude Computer Use, but better.
A Knowledge Graph of All the Bad People in the World
Leveraging LLMs, graph databases, and website-agnostic scraping.
Built to handle millions of pages per day at scale.

You’ll be taking the lead on one of these projects, building ML systems from notebook to AWS – essentially the fun part of our current CTO’s work. Tech we’re using to in these projects: Python, LLMs, VLMs, traditional ML, Django, Docker, Postgres, AWS

Sphinx Labs

Founding Software Engineer

San Francisco, CA (Onsite)$100K+ & Equityfull-time

Additional questions