Founding Engineer

You’ll be Volta’s technical leader in Paris. You’ll be the technical voice of the company, run the tech kickoff, build the first integrations yourself, and then hire and grow the FDE squad that comes after you. You report directly to the CTO, based in Italy. Think of it as the CTO role, localised to the French market: hands-on at the start, product-shaping as it scales.

Key responsibilities:

• Lead engineering in France, hands-on from day one — a leadership role where the leader still ships code

• Start with Connect: design and build the Python integrations connecting Volta to client systems, owning the full lifecycle from spec to go-live

• Be Volta’s technical voice in France — join presales conversations to explain our architecture, data flows, and security/compliance posture to client CTOs, IT and security teams; run technical kickoffs

• Own the customer relationship as the technical counterpart, from first call through go-live and beyond

• Go wide on the product once Connect is under control — real say in what we build for the French market, and the license to build it yourself

• Grow the team — hire, onboard and lead the engineers who follow; define how the team works in FranceMust have:

• 5+ years building backend systems in modern Python for production-critical workloads, and still hands-on today — not someone who’s moved into pure management

• Experience integrating enterprise systems you didn’t own and couldn’t change (ERP, WMS, PIM, EDI, or other legacy enterprise systems) — missing sandboxes, weak documentation, a vendor between you and the API

• Product engineering experience, not just integrations or pipelines — you’ve built core or user-facing product too

• Strong SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL Server, or Oracle) and comfort with messy, real-world data

• Strong system design and distributed systems knowledge — you can design components and backend patterns that scale without scaling the team linearly, and defend those choices to a client’s architects

• Real client exposure — you’ve run technical conversations with enterprise customers, not just internal stakeholders, and can run a kickoff or handle a security questionnaire in French

• Some leadership history — led a small team, a squad, or been the technical anchor others were hired around; wants to build and lead a team while still writing code

• Appetite to contribute across the product, not just integrations — opinions about where Volta should go in France, and the drive to go build them

• Fluent French and English, with excellent technical communication in both

• High autonomy and ownership — comfortable reporting to a CTO based in another country, escalating early rather than absorbing problems silently, and juggling presales, delivery, and hiring without dropping delivery

Nice to have:

• Experience in a Tech or startup environment
• ERP integration experience specifically
• Familiarity with wholesale, distribution, or order management environments
• Consulting or enterprise integration background
• Experience as a first hire in a country, or in an office remote from HQ
• Has hired and onboarded engineers before
• A builder mentality — defaults to shipping over delegating, and thrives on the adaptability a fast-moving startup demands1. Screen — Chief of Staff (30 min, French): scope, seniority, motivation for a founding in-country role

2. Integration deep dive — CTO + Connect Tech Lead (60 min): system design discussion
3. Founder & Customer Success — ideally in person in the Paris office; a conversation with the Founder and the Customer Success team you’ll work with daily (two calls if in person isn’t possible)
4. Reference checks