CTO Hands-on

Licorne Society a été missionné par une startup en pleine croissance pour les aider à trouver leur CTO hands-on.

**Join a fast-growing B2B SaaS company reinventing how Europe’s largest enterprises negotiate**

**Location**:Paris, France (mostly in-person)

**Start Date**:Q1 2026

✍️ **Contract Type**:Full-time (CDI)

**Compensation**:Fixed salary + bonus + equity (BSPCE-equivalent)

**Help reshape how billions are negotiated**:
Enterprise procurement teams negotiate millions every week — yet the negotiation layer remains fragmented, manual, and poorly tooled.

We are building a cloud-based platform that enables large organizations to run **eAuctions and structured eNegotiations**with speed, reliability, and strong governance. The platform is already used by multiple tier-1 industrial and retail groups and has processed **€100M+ in GMV**.

We are now **internalizing our core engineering**and laying the technical foundations for scale. As our **first in-house engineering leader**, you will take ownership of the core IP and architect the future of a mission-critical B2B product.

**Your role**:
You will be the **technical owner of the platform**.

This is a **hands-on leadership role**: you will write production code, make key architectural decisions, and progressively build the engineering function.

You will take over from a strong external development team, ensure a smooth knowledge transfer, and set the company up for long-term product velocity and enterprise-grade reliability.

**What you will own**:

- End-to-end platform architecture (frontend, backend, data, infrastructure)
- Production reliability for real, high-stakes enterprise workflows
- Security, auditability, and data protection for sensitive procurement dataEngineering standards, delivery cadence, and future hiring roadmap

**️ About the company**:
We are a Paris-based B2B SaaS startup (team of ~6) combining **deep procurement expertise**with **startup execution speed**.

In the past 12 months, we have:

- Built and shipped a high-performance SaaS platform
- Secured **€1M+ in projected revenue**:

- Raised **€2M+**from top-tier European venture funds
- Signed multiple enterprise customers and are scaling rapidly

The product is live, used daily, and delivering tangible value — customer satisfaction is one of our strongest signals.

**️ Product & technical roadmap**:
We have already built **18 types of eAuctions**, giving buyers advanced levers to run better negotiations. What’s next:

- **AI-driven Auction Builder**:

- A system that reads incoming RFPs and recommends the optimal negotiation strategy — then configures it directly in the platform.
- **Smarter automation**:

- Enhanced auction logic, pricing intelligence, and bidder behavior analysis using optimization algorithms and LLMs.
- **End-to-end procurement workflow**:

- Becoming the central sourcing cockpit, with negotiation at the core and a seamless, integrated enterprise experience.

**What success looks like**:
**First 30 days**:

- Full audit of codebase and infrastructure, with a clear risk map and action plan
- Knowledge transfer completed with the external team
- Monitoring, error tracking, and release processes stabilized

**Days 30-90**:

- Measurable improvements in performance and reliability
- Clear architectural direction documented
- First key roadmap features shipped end-to-end

**After 3-6 months**:

- Strong delivery cadence, fewer incidents, faster iterationHiring and onboarding plan defined and first hire(s) made if needed

**️ Current tech stack**:

- **Frontend**:Nuxt 3, Vue, Vuetify
- **Backend**:Nuxt 3 (Nitro)
- **Database**:PostgreSQL (Supabase)
- **Hosting**:Vercel

The stack can evolve as we scale — with a strong preference for **pragmatic decisions that protect delivery speed**.

**What we are looking for**:
**Must-haves**:

- Strong full-stack background with true ownership of production systems
- Solid experience with Vue and Node.js (Nuxt is a big plus)
- Strong PostgreSQL fundamentals (Supabase experience is a plus)
- Experience building and operating a demanding B2B SaaS product
- High bar for reliability, performance, clean architecture, and security
- Comfortable working autonomously and making tradeoffs

**✨ Nice-to-haves**:

- Previous experience leading or mentoring engineers (formally or informally)
- Built workflow-heavy or real-time systems
- Integration mindset (ERP, SAP-like systems, SSO, audit trails, exports)Interest in AI-enabled product features and automation

**Work setup**:
We are looking for someone **based in Paris or willing to work mostly in person**.

Remote days are flexible, but we strongly believe that **early-stage momentum is built through close, live collaboration**, mainly from our offices at Station F and Châtelet.

**Hiring process**:

- ️ Intro call (30 min)

Technical deep dive with the current freelance tech lead
Practical case (time-boxed) + architecture discussion
- ️ Team meeting and informal lunch