🧭 Lead Tech (future CTO)

🏢 The Company

An early-stage startup building a machine learning platform for industry, backed by a software vendor that is already well-established in the field.

• The product: detect machine anomalies, explain losses in yield and quality, model energy consumption, and make all of this actionable for a process engineer—not a team of data scientists.
• Clients: world-class manufacturers in the automotive, aerospace, and agri-food industries. The drive system is already in place; it comes from the parent company.
• The path forward: The project is intended to become an independent entity. You’re here for the journey, not the destination.

🎯 The Role

You're the company's first true technical heavyweight. The CTO title is a goal to work toward—it's not something listed on your contract from day one: it's a role you build over time.

• You drive the product roadmap in collaboration with management: feasibility, effort, value—you make the calls.
• You code. Every day—except Friday afternoons. The app is built with Ruby on Rails.
• You'll mentor an existing developer, then recruit and build out the team as the company grows.
• You design the architecture that will need to handle increased load: scalability, security, technical debt.
• You lay the technical groundwork for the entity's independence: architecture documentation, intellectual property, and decisions that can be justified to investors.
• You oversee the infrastructure and the cloud, and you explain technical decisions in layman's terms to people who aren't tech-savvy.

⚠️ What You Need to Know

This is a senior engineer position, with a technical leadership role as the ultimate goal. Right now, there’s no team, no processes, and no committee. There’s a developer, a codebase, demanding industrial clients, and a lot of things to write from scratch—including the ones that aren’t glamorous.

If you're expecting a fully formed team and a well-defined scope, this position will frustrate you. If you're expecting the opposite, there aren't many opportunities like this one: the product already has users and a market, and the architecture has yet to be decided.

🔨 Technical Challenges

• Heterogeneous data ingestion: real-time machine data, OPC-UA protocol, sensors, flat files, APIs. Every plant is different, and the product promises installation within 48 hours.
• Volumetry: hundreds of process variables per production line, in real time.
• Model industrialization: The algorithms come from the data team; it’s up to you to put them into production on the platform.
• Infrastructure to be modernized: containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Rancher, RKE2). A solid foundation in these areas is preferred, but a genuine ability to learn and develop these skills is sufficient.
• Security and Compliance: Vulnerability Management, GDPR, Access. Our clients are major industrial companies, and their procurement processes closely monitor these areas.

🧑‍💻 The stack

• Backend: Ruby on Rails
• Data / ML: Python, Anomaly and Correlation Models
• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Rancher, RKE2, cloud
• Integrations: OPC-UA, API, file imports

The scope is intended to expand to include other tech stacks as the team grows.

🎯 Ideal Candidate Profile

• Experience: An experienced CTO or a senior developer ready to transition into a technical leadership role. Previous experience in technical leadership at a startup or scale-up is a definite plus.
• Expertise: Ruby on Rails and scalable web application architecture.
• Data: Enough knowledge of data science to communicate with the data team and integrate their algorithms. You don't need to be a data scientist.
• Hands-on: You code and mentor—all in the same week.
• Product: You know how to stick to a roadmap and say no to certain features.
• DevOps and security: a solid level of proficiency, or a proven ability to quickly develop new skills.
• Languages: Fluent in French, business-level English. This is required due to the documentation, the ecosystem, and international clients.

🏢 The Work Environment

• Reports directly to the president.
• Executive status, daily flat rate.
• Position based in Paris, with a hybrid work arrangement: on-site and remote work.
• Team rituals (progress updates, code reviews, retrospectives) should be established by you and tailored to the size of the team, not to that of a large group.

🛑 This job isn't for you if...

• You want to manage without touching the code.
• You need a team that's already in place and processes that were established before you arrived.
• The title of CTO must be included in the contract at the time of signing.
• A Rails monolith that you'll need to scale up seems less appealing to you than a greenfield project.

✅ This job is for you if...

• You've already been the lead or second engineer on a product, and you enjoyed it.
• You want to decide on the architecture of a product that already has paying customers.
• You like to see the results of your code measured in terms of scrap avoided and fewer machine stoppages.
• Building a team starting with one person excites you rather than worries you.

📌 Prerequisites

• Fluent in French: The team, management, and some of the clients work in French.
• Valid authorization to work in France, with no action required on the part of the employer.
• Based in the Île-de-France region: This is a hybrid position requiring regular on-site work in Paris and governed by a French employment contract.

🪜 The Hiring Process

2 to 3 steps, including a meeting with the president. Allow two to three weeks.