AI & Industrial Transformation Lead

At OSS Ventures we're looking for an AI & Industrial Transformation Lead to join our team.

TL;DR

Position: AI & Industrial Transformation Lead

• Location: Paris (on-site client presence required)

• Salary: [100-125]K€ (80/20% fix + variable) package + BSPCE

• Contract: Full-time, CDI

• Reports to: Partner

• Career path: OSS Partner · Founder · COO in portfolio company

The industrial world is at an inflection point.

Decathlon is rebuilding its global manufacturing footprint around AI. Teknor Apex wants predictive quality and computer vision in every plant across North America and Europe. Famille Peugeot, Tikehau, and a dozen of Europe's largest industrial groups are asking us the same question: how do we actually make this work on the ground?

We've been answering that question for six years, and the answer works. Our portfolio AI products are running in 3,800+ industrial sites, used daily by 200,000 operators. We've taken deployments from pilot to "standard across the fleet" at some of Europe's most demanding industrial groups. That's not the problem.

The problem is volume. The demand has outpaced the team. Decathlon, Teknor Apex, Pierre Fabre and our other partners are queueing up to go deeper and faster, and we need more people who can walk into a plant in safety shoes at 9am and present to a board at 3pm, in the same day, without missing a beat in either room.

That's why this role exists. You'll co-build the AI-era version of our industrial transformation capability alongside the Partner team. Same DNA, ten times the throughput.

You'll be the person who walks into a Decathlon warehouse or a Teknor Apex compound plant with a portfolio founder, diagnoses the real problem in 48 hours, designs a deployment that survives contact with reality, and sees it through to measurable P&L impact.

Concretely:

• Design the vision and the  Roadmap of customer transformation after a deep and extensive audit phase of  their business and Ops digital maturity.

• Own end-to-end deployments of our portfolio's AI solutions at our largest industrial partners: scoping, integration, change management, go-live, measurement.

• Operate in two registers, every day. Morning on the shop floor with a production supervisor in PPE. Afternoon in a steering committee with a COO and a CIO. Neither audience gets a watered-down version of you.

• Adapt startup products to industrial reality. OT/IT constraints, legacy MES, union dynamics, shop-floor resistance. This is where most transformation efforts die. Your job is to make ours the ones that don't.

• Compound the playbook. Every deployment you run becomes a replicable use case. After 18 months, a new colleague should be able to execute what you invented.

• Shape portfolio roadmaps. You'll be the single loudest voice telling our founders what the ground actually needs. You're not a customer success rep. You're the sparring partner who turns field insight into product strategy.

• Scale across geographies. 40% of our new ARR now comes from the US. You'll operate out of Paris, but your impact zone is Paris, Boston, and wherever our partners build things.

An engineering background is strongly preferred: you are comfortable with industrial systems (MES, OT/IT, production data) as well as with senior stakeholders. You come from MBB, Roland Berger, Oliver Wyman, Kearney, or Accenture Strategy. You've done 4 to 7 years there. You've led at least two full industrial engagements. Real ones, with shop-floor time, not sector slides.

You've steered committees with COOs, CISOs, and plant GMs. You can shift register from board to operator in the same afternoon without losing either.

And you've hit the wall every top consultant hits around year 4. You're tired of recommending things you don't get to build. You want the scoreboard to be what changed in the plant, not what was on the slide.

What will make you thrive here

• You've touched industrial AI or data: computer vision, predictive maintenance, MES analytics, digital twins. Not just read about them.

• You've acted as a sparring partner to a founder or a COO, not just a client.

• You tell your stories in terms of what changed on the ground (uptime, FTP, OEE, ramp-up time) not in terms of what you recommended.

• You believe AI will reshape industrial performance this decade, not in ten years. If you think it's overhyped, we'll disagree respectfully and you'll be happier elsewhere.

What you’ll build here

• Deep understanding of startup product cycles and the constraints of industrial SaaS companies

• A decision-maker network in European industry that you own and carry with you

• A real sense of what it means to build a company - not just transform one

Expected Behaviors

• You act before you’re 100% certain - and iterate

• You’re as comfortable convincing a GM as spending 2 hours on the shop floor

• You flag problems early, clearly, and with a proposed solution

• You instinctively know what can scale vs. what’s a one-off

• From €8K0 to €100K fixed + €20K to €25K on objectives 

• BSPCE with a transparent structure.

• Career path to OSS Partner within 3 to 5 years, or Founder of a new studio venture, or COO in one of our scale-ups. This is not a vague promise. It's the actual trajectory of the people who've done roles like yours at OSS.

• Direct access to the decision-makers of European, Asian and US industry, as an operator, not an advisor. You build your own network, and it's yours to keep.

• A seat at the table as we scale a practice that already works, with your fingerprints on the next phase: methodology, team, client portfolio, international expansion.

At 6 months: you own 2+ active deployments. Clients see you as the point of contact, not a vendor. First measurable result is in.

At 12 months: 2 to 3 documented, replicable use cases exist because of you. You've expanded ARR on at least one account. You have a clear point of view on what you want to build next.

At 3 years: you're either running the practice, leading a portfolio segment as Partner, founding the next studio company, or operating as COO in one of our scale-ups. You'll have earned the optionality.

• You need a fully scoped brief before you move.

• You measure your output by deck polish rather than what changed in the plant.

• You're looking for a team to manage, not a problem to solve.

• Spending a day with a production supervisor feels like a step down.

• You think AI is hype that won't hit industrial P&L for another five years.

About OSS Ventures

Our mission

Build and invest in technological companies that accelerate the pivot of our production model

toward a desirable one. In practice: B2B SaaS for blue-collar industries - manufacturing,

construction, logistics.

Our story

OSS was founded with a simple bet: go into factories, understand the real problems, and

build software that actually works in the field. Six years later, that bet has compounded.

We've built 22 companies from scratch, deployed across 3,800+ industrial sites, with

200,000+ daily users and €40M ARR across the portfolio. 

Our first cohort - Fabriq,Mercateam, Kraaft, MyC - have done or are entering Series B territory, with one exit expected per year starting now. 

We're building 6 companies this year, 8 in 2027.

Two months ago, we closed a €44M fund - our largest to date. Our investors include

Decathlon Pulse, Teknor Apex, Tikehau Capital, and Famille Peugeot. 

We operate from Paris and Boston, with 5 portfolio companies now generating ~40% of their new ARR from the US market.

As far as we know, we're in the top 2.5% of all funds worldwide by performance. We think we

have a shot at building a generational institution.

We have the capital, the traction, the team- and a different culture.

Our ambition

We will never be a 1,000-person organization. We will always be sub-50 people - high

individual autonomy, high reach, high impact. The next 3 years are about proving we can be

world-class at all three fronts: building, investing, and scaling portfolio companies into

category leaders - on both sides of the Atlantic.

How we work

We build AI companies by working inside factories, alongside industry experts, solving

problems where they actually exist. We are embedded - not external. We go to the shop

floor before we write a line of code. We don't do remote conviction.

Four pillars structure everything we do: 

• Build (product-led, hands-on with founders), 

• Network (connecting startups, manufacturers, and partners), 

• Scale (fund capital + global expansion),

• Transform (partner success, tangible measurable value). 

Our values
They describe how we behave and what we believe in. When in doubt, they are our guide.

🤗🤖 Human judgement. Machine speed.
We trust human judgement and care about human connection. When it comes to execution, we use every machine we can, starting with AI.

🏈 Play world class.
We play at the highest level and train like athletes. Every team member is a world-class player, and the game changes every day.

🤝 Trustful relationships. Performing partnerships.
We work with people we trust and act in good faith. Feedback is a daily practice: we say the hard things when they’re true, because we want our partners to win.

🔪 We eat what we kill.
We take risks and believe in a fair balance of risk and reward. Work is done when results can be measured, and we reward value creation generously.

📈 Compound the system.
The system is the star, not the individual. We automate whatever we can to achieve outsized impact with a small team and a healthy work-life balance.

🛖 Build something the world needs.
We are builders first. We want real impact on our portfolio companies and on the world, and we want people to use what we build.