Chief of Staff - Platform
Alice & Bob
People & HR, Operations
Paris, France
About the Platform Department
The Platform department builds the software and computational infrastructure that powers Alice & Bob’s quantum computers. Our scope spans scientific software, cloud/GPU compute, simulation tools, and the orchestration systems required to design, calibrate, and operate our hardware.
The Mission 🎯
As Platform Chief of Staff, your core mission is execution leadership: turning ambitious technical priorities into shipped systems. Working directly with the Head of Platform and team leads, you will drive execution across software, infrastructure, and physics. You will also eliminate ambiguity, align teams around clear milestones, unblock decisions, and scale our operating model.
A primary focus will be leading initiatives for our next-generation software layer, including orchestration, automated calibration workflows, and increasingly agentic modes of quantum computer operation.
Who You Are
This role is built for a senior, software-oriented technical leader (e.g., former CTO, tech founder, or senior engineering leader) who brings:
- Technical & Academic Depth: Strong fundamentals in software engineering, mathematics, and physics.
- Operating Discipline: A proven ability to move complex, ambiguous initiatives across the finish line.
- Strategic Partnership: The leadership maturity to act as a trusted advisor on roadmap, organization, and execution strategy.
Responsibilities
- Drive high-impact technical initiatives from ambiguity to delivery, especially around the quantum computer operating system.
- Identify where teams need clearer ownership, faster decision-making, stronger technical framing, or better coordination.
- Step in hands-on when needed to unblock progress, clarify trade-offs, accelerate decisions, or build momentum.
- Ensure major initiatives result in shipped capabilities, not only plans, documents, or coordination rituals.
- Build the operating model that allows Platform to work effectively with physicists, hardware, software and infrastructure teams, and leadership.
- Identify bottlenecks in workflows, communication, planning, and decision-making.
- Implement pragmatic processes that increase clarity and execution without adding unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Support the evolution from research tooling toward robust, scalable platform capabilities.
- Challenge technical assumptions constructively and help teams converge on clear architectural and execution choices.
- Serve as a trusted thought partner on roadmap, organization, execution, and platform strategy.
- Translate long-term technical ambition into concrete priorities, milestones, KPIs, resourcing needs, and delivery plans.
1. Drive Execution of Major Technical Initiatives
2. Improve Cross-Team Alignment and Operating Rhythm
3. Bridge Software, Physics, and Infrastructure
4. Partner on the Department Roadmap
Experience
- 7+ years of experience in a demanding technical environment, ideally in a software-first technology company, deeptech scale-up, research infrastructure team, or complex engineering organization.
- First-hand experience leading mission-critical technical initiatives across multiple teams.
- Proven ability to move from ambiguous goals to structured plans, clear ownership, and delivered outcomes.
- Strong software culture and ability to reason about architecture, platforms, infrastructure, tooling, and developer or scientific workflows.
- Solid math and physics fundamentals, with the ability to engage credibly with physicists and technical experts.
- Master’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical field.
- Excellent written and spoken English.
Nice to Have & Success Measures
- Experience building scalable internal developer, infrastructure, or specialized (MLOps, scientific, orchestration) platforms, with deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, GPU compute, distributed systems, and workflow scheduling.
- Familiarity with scientific computing, numerical methods, simulation, calibration, characterization, or experimental automation.
- Prior experience in deeptech, quantum computing, hardware-adjacent software, robotics, aerospace, semiconductor, or other complex R&D environments.
- French language skills.