Who we are

CryptoNext Security builds the cryptography that protects the world's data once quantum computers can break today's encryption. Founded in 2019 out of 20+ years of research at INRIA, CNRS and Sorbonne, we are recognised by Gartner among the global top 5 PQC vendors and are the first European company selected by NIST's NCCoE on post-quantum migration.

Our R&D team has built the technology that brought us to market. We now need an Engineering Manager to take ownership of how this team works: increase its productivity, set a clear architecture vision, and balance the short-term pressure of shipping features against the long-term need to pay down technical debt.

This is a builder's role. You will report to the CTO (and work closely with Product to ship a roadmap that customers (banks, governments, infrastructure operators) are already buying.

What you'll do

• Lead the R&D team day-to-day. Run 1:1s, set objectives, recruit, and develop people. About 12 engineers today, split across 3 product/infra scopes.

• Own the architecture vision. Make our products scalable as we move from early customers to large-scale deployments. Define the patterns we use, the boundaries between services, and how we evolve our current products) without breaking customer integrations.

• Run the tech-debt-vs-features trade-off. Work with the CTO and Product to decide what we refactor, what we ship, and in what order. Make this explicit, visible and defended to the rest of the company.

• Increase team productivity. Diagnose what slows us down, fix it. CI/CD, observability, code review culture, sprint rituals, ownership boundaries - whatever the bottleneck is, you own it.

• Define and monitor Engineering KPIs and dashboards to track delivery performance, velocity, development efficiency, quality metrics, and team capacity utilization.

• Analyze engineering data to identify bottlenecks, improve predictability and operational efficiency, and support data-driven decision-making

• Partner with Product and Customer-facing teams. Translate customer needs into deliverable engineering work. Shield the team from chaos, but also bring them close enough to customers that they build the right thing.

• Report up to the CTO and exec team. Clear, honest visibility on progress, risks, and resource needs.

Must-have

• 5+ years as a software engineer in B2B SaaS, deeptech, or similar high-complexity products.

• 5+ years as an Engineering Manager, Tech Lead, or equivalent leadership role with direct people management responsibility (5+ engineers).

• Demonstrable architecture authority — you can show concrete decisions you made on system design, scalability, or technical debt that paid off.

• Comfortable navigating the tech-debt-vs-features trade-off as a first-class management responsibility, not as an afterthought.

• Strong written and verbal communication in both French and English.

Strong plus

• AI-savvy. You use AI tools daily in your own work (coding, planning, decision support) and have ideas about how AI can change the way your team operates and the products you build.

• Background in C, C++, low-level systems, or cryptographic libraries (OpenSSL, BoringSSL, mbedTLS, libsodium).

• Experience scaling a team and product from early-stage to multi-customer enterprise deployment.

Nice to have

• Knowledge of cybersecurity fundamentals, especially cryptographic protocols (TLS, IPsec, PKCS, X.509, HSM interfaces).

• Familiarity with regulated B2B environments (finance, government, defense, telco).

• Awareness of post-quantum cryptography as a topic — you don't need to know lattice math, you need to be intellectually curious about it.

What we offer

• Competitive package

• Office in central Paris, hybrid working — 3 days in office minimum, the rest flexible.

• A small, focused team with real customer wins and a clear mission. No corporate fog.

• Direct access to a credible CTO and a research-led culture rooted in INRIA / CNRS / Sorbonne. The intellectual environment is one of CryptoNext's strongest assets.