Forward Development Engineer @ Vela

TL;DR

Also known as: Customer Success Engineer · Implementation Consultant · Delivery Analyst

Location(s): Paris, France (IDF) — on-site preferred, partially hybrid possible

Salary range: €60,000 – €80,000 gross/year + BSPCE equity package

Contract type: CDI (permanent) — Cadre

Reporting line: Directly to Jean-Baptiste (CEO & Co-founder)

Start date: Q2 2026 — as soon as possible

Who We Are

Our Ambition

Vela is building the operating layer that industrial CEOs have always needed and never had — a system that doesn't just show what happened, but tells you what to do next, while there is still time to act. We want to become the default decision infrastructure for mid-market industrial companies across Europe — the platform where the few decisions that actually drive margin get surfaced, governed, committed, and tracked.

Our Mission

Vela's mission is to help industrial leaders make high-stakes decisions that repeatedly translate into margin-point gains and freed-up cash — by building the system-level foundation to govern every decision before variance becomes financial loss. We do this by combining a rigorous causal model of each business with a live operational data layer and a structured weekly rhythm — so that every CEO we work with knows every Monday exactly which driver to pull, by how much, and who owns it.

Our Story

Vela was founded inside OSS Ventures, the leading French industrial tech venture builder, by Jean-Baptiste (CEO, background in VC and B2B SaaS growth) and his co-founder CTO. The insight was simple and persistent: the industrial CEOs who build the best businesses don't have better data — they have better decision habits. And those habits need infrastructure.

We started by doing the work manually — sitting with CEOs every week, building their causal models by hand, filling the cockpit ourselves, running the operating review. What we discovered is that this approach works: clients make better decisions, variance surfaces earlier, and margin improves. Now we are building the product that automates what we have been doing by hand. Today, Vela is in active deployment with several industrial design partners across logistics, transport, and manufacturing — and scaling quickly.

Our Values

We operate as a small, high-trust, high-output team. Four values define how we work:

• Causal thinking over correlation. We don't report numbers. We explain why they moved and what to do next.

• Delivery over presentation. Our output is a decision committed in a cockpit — not a slide deck. We measure ourselves by client action, not by the quality of our analysis.

• Depth as a differentiator. We go further than any consultant or tool has gone before inside our clients' operations. We earn the right to be trusted by knowing more than anyone else in the room.

• Velocity with judgment. We move fast, but we never ship a recommendation we can't defend — to a CEO, to their board, and to ourselves.

Our Team

We are currently a founding team of two (CEO and CTO) helped by the ressources of OSS Ventures (product manager, product design, developers, GTM) actively working with three industrial clients as design partners. This role is our first key hire and will shape the culture, methods, and delivery standards of the company for years to come.

Why We Need You

In a nutshell

You are the person who makes Vela real for each client. You take a CEO's messy operational reality — fragmented data, intuitive processes, informal decision habits — and transform it into a structured, live, causal cockpit inside the Vela platform. You run the weekly operating review. You explain the variances. You help the executive team commit to the right action. You are part management consultant, part data engineer, part product expert — and you don't need a slide deck to deliver value.

Broadly speaking

Your mandate has three dimensions.

You build: model each client's business causality inside Vela — drivers, sub-drivers, formulas, alerts, scenarios — using their data, their language, and their operating logic.

You run: facilitate the weekly operating review with the CEO and core team, turning signals into decisions and decisions into committed actions with owners and deadlines.

You improve: identify and close the data blindspots, process gaps, and model weaknesses that limit the quality of Vela's signal — and feed every insight back into the product.

On a day-to-day basis

On Mondays, you review incoming data feeds and alert signals for each client and prepare the week's operating brief — which drivers have drifted, which decisions are pending, what has been executed since last week.

Tuesday through Thursday, you are in client environments — on-site or remote — running data investigations, building new driver formulas, structuring causal trees, validating alert thresholds, facilitating exec reviews, and helping leadership teams commit to concrete actions.

On Fridays, you update the Vela cockpit with the week's decisions, execution status, and model refinements. You document what you've learned — patterns, shortcuts, better ways to model specific industrial dynamics — and share them with the founding team to feed into product development.

Who You'll Be Working With

Directly, you will work alongside Jean-Baptiste (CEO) and the CTO co-founder. You will be in the room — or on the call — with industrial CEOs, CFOs, and COOs every week. These are executives running businesses with €10-500M in revenue, under PE pressure, with real operational complexity and real consequences for bad decisions.

You will not be managed from a distance. You will be expected to show up as a peer — not an assistant — to senior executives. This requires confidence, preparation, and the ability to hold your ground when challenged on a number or a recommendation.

As Vela grows, you will be one of the first people who builds the practice and defines what great delivery looks like at scale.

What's Next in Your Career Path?

This is not a support role. It is a founding role in a category-defining company.

Within 12 months, you can grow into a Lead Forward Development Engineer — owning a portfolio of clients independently, with junior analysts reporting to you. Within 24 months, as Vela scales, you can move toward Head of Delivery, shaping the methodology, tooling, and team that runs all client implementations.

Beyond that: if you have entrepreneurial ambition, working at the intersection of industrial operations, causal modeling, and product is one of the best training grounds in Europe for founding your own venture or joining a portfolio company as a founding operator.

The people who succeed here don't see this as a stepping stone. They see it as the place where they become the sharpest operational thinker they have ever been.

Your Profile to Make This a Success

1. Mandatory required skills

3+ years in a data-intensive analytical or consulting role. You have spent time in a context where your job was to explain complex business performance — not just report on it. This could be management consulting (McKinsey, BCG, Roland Berger, or equivalent boutique), financial analysis in an industrial group, FP&A, or operational excellence. What matters is that you have learned to work under pressure, structure ambiguous problems, and deliver recommendations to senior executives.

2+ years working directly with operational or financial data. You are comfortable navigating ERP exports, SQL databases, Excel models, and CSV feeds. You can write a formula, build a driver calculation, and trace a data pipeline without needing a data engineer at your side. You don't need to be a software engineer — but you must be fluent in the language of business data.

1+ year in a client-facing role with C-level stakeholders. You have been in the room with a CEO or CFO and held your own. You know how to prepare, how to listen, how to push back respectfully, and how to close a meeting with a clear next action. Client management is not something you are learning — it is something you are refining.

2. This will be important in your job — we'll teach what you currently miss

We don't expect you to arrive knowing everything. Here is what we will build together:

• Causal modeling methodology — the Vela framework for structuring driver trees, lead/lag relationships, and alert logic.

• Industrial operations literacy — the mechanics of mid-market manufacturing, logistics, and transport businesses. If you come from a different sector, we will immerse you quickly.

• Vela product mastery — how to use the platform to its fullest, how to configure AI agents, and how to input decisions in a way that generates the most value for the client.

• Change management in industrial contexts — how to shift a CEO from intuition-driven to causal-driven decision-making without losing their trust.

This Is Not the Ideal Position for You If…

• You are not location-flexible. Clients are real industrial companies, often with sites outside Paris. Occasional travel to client locations across France and neighboring countries is part of the role.

• You are not an entrepreneurial profile. Vela is a startup. Processes are being built as we go. If you need a fully defined job, a large team, and established procedures to feel confident, this role will be frustrating.

• You are not looking for a positively challenging job. We expect a lot. The clients we work with have complex businesses and high expectations. You will be asked to perform at the level of a senior consultant from your first weeks.

• You are not fully comfortable working in French and in English. Our clients are French-speaking. Our product documentation and team communication are in English. You need to be genuinely fluent in both — strong enough to facilitate a tense exec review in French and write sharp product specs in English on the same day.

• You prefer to deliver analysis rather than drive decisions. Our job ends when a decision is committed and owned — not when the slide is finished. If you find satisfaction in the depth of your analysis more than in the clarity of the action it produces, this role will feel misaligned.

Overall Expected Behaviors

• Show up prepared. Every client meeting is a high-stakes context. Come with a point of view, not just a summary.

• Write decisions, not summaries. When you close a session, there is a committed action with an owner and a deadline — in the platform, not in your head.

• Surface problems early. If a data source is unreliable, a driver formula is wrong, or a client is disengaging — say so immediately. We cannot fix what we don't see.

• Document what you learn. Every pattern you discover, every shortcut that works, every model that breaks — write it down. You are building the knowledge base of the company.

• Operate with low ego. We work with CEOs who have strong opinions and high expectations. The fastest way to earn their trust is to be rigorous, prepared, and willing to be corrected without losing composure.

What Success Looks Like

At 30 days: You have completed onboarding on the Vela platform, sat in on every active client review, and built your first causal model independently for one client. You understand the framework deeply enough to explain it to a new client without support.

At 90 days: You are running three to five client reviews per week independently. You have closed at least two significant data blindspots across the portfolio. You have shipped at least one product insight that has changed how the founding team thinks about the platform.

At 180 days: You are the operational backbone of Vela's client delivery. Clients know you by name, trust your analysis, and commit to your recommendations. You have started training the AI agents on your causal templates and are beginning to mentor a junior hire.

Working Conditions

• Office: Vela is based in Paris, within OSS Ventures. You will have a dedicated workspace with access to the full OSS infrastructure, community, and portfolio.

• Remote: Hybrid is possible after onboarding. We ask for a minimum of three days per week in the office during the first three months, then discuss based on performance and client needs.

• Travel: Up to 20–30% of your time may involve client visits across France and neighboring countries. Travel is reimbursed in full.

• Equipment: MacBook Pro, all software tools, and access to client data environments provided from day one.

• Benefits: Competitive CDI package, BSPCE equity, standard French cadre benefits (health, transport subsidy), and access to the OSS Ventures network and training programs.