[Hiring] Chief of Staff to the CTO @Pennylane SAS

Role Description

As Chief of Staff to the CTO, you operate as a senior leader in the Tech organisation. Your leverage does not come from managing teams but from owning the hardest problems that sit between them, and from being technical enough to earn the trust of the other engineering leaders.

You are the person the CTO trusts with ambiguous, org-wide problems. You turn that ambiguity into a clear framing, a decision, an owner and a measurable outcome.

This is not a coordination role. You are expected to have opinions on engineering strategy, staffing choices and technical trade-offs, and to defend them in front of the Tech leadership team.

Key missions

• Engineering strategy and transversal initiatives:
  • Own the strategic, cross-organization initiatives that no single squad can carry: platform or architecture programmes, reliability and quality step-changes, engineering productivity, technical debt paydown.
  • Frame the problem, build the technical and business case, secure alignment across Engineering, Product and Security to drive execution.
  • Lead the Tech side of company-level programmes (e.g. European expansion, major compliance or infrastructure shifts) alongside the rest of the Tech leadership.
• Planning & Performance tracking:
  • Own the Tech planning cycle: collect the inputs, surface the trade-offs (capacity vs. platform, run vs. new bets), and drive the arbitration with Tech leadership.
  • Drive the definition and calibration of Tech OKRs, and hold the organisation accountable.
  • Define what "good" looks like for a 70+ squad engineering organization and build the metrics that measure it (delivery cadence, reliability, quality, staffing and attrition, engineering satisfaction).
• Decision-making and leadership cadence:
  • Own the Tech leadership operating system: staff meetings, QBRs, roadmap and architecture reviews. You design them, set the agenda, write or commission the pre-reads, frame the decisions to be made, and make sure decisions land.
  • Maintain the CTO's decision log: what was decided, by whom, with what trade-off, and what happened next.
  • Raise the quality of decision-making across the Tech leadership team.
• Communication:
  • Lead internal and operational communications across the engineering organization, building clear messaging systems from board decks down to team-wide updates.

Qualifications

• An engineering degree (engineering, computer science or equivalent scientific curriculum).
• Technical fluency: you can read a design doc, follow an architecture discussion, challenge an estimate or a trade-off, and be taken seriously by senior engineers.
• 7-10 years of experience, including significant time inside a tech organisation at scale (multiple squads, platform teams), where you have lived the problems of scaling engineering.
• A track record of owning complex, cross-organisational initiatives from framing to measurable outcome with senior stakeholders.
• Outstanding written communication: this role produces documents that senior people act on.
• Fluency in English.

Requirements

• A hands-on engineering past: software engineer, engineering manager, Technical Program Manager, architect or equivalent.
• Experience as a Chief of Staff, VP/Director of Engineering Operations, or in a strategy & operations function inside a product-led tech company.

Benefits

• 25 vacation days paid by Pennylane.
• A competitive compensation package.
• Company shares to enjoy a piece of the success story you're building with us.
• A budget to turn your home into a more comfortable workspace, as well as a monthly allowance to work from a coworking space whenever you feel like it.
• Access to 8000 fitness spaces in Europe and more than 300 activities related to wellness through our partner Gymlib.
• Access to Busuu to perfect your English or your French.
• The latest Apple equipment.
• Remote work options from your country of residence within a maximum time difference of two hours from the CET time zone.
• Regular company events such as Tech Days and annual company seminars.