Talent Acquisition Lead – Forward Deployed Engineers (H/F)

Company Description

Our mission. We make AI software deliver the value it promises, measured in euros on the client's P&L, not in slides.

Our story. The FDE Company was founded in 2026 by Devoteam, one of Europe's leading technology consultancies, in partnership with OSS Ventures, the studio behind Europe's largest portfolio of industrial AI software. TWe embed Forward Deployed Engineers inside our clients’ operations, starting with industry and supply chain. They are engineers who write production code on the client's site, frame the business case, defend the number in front of an executive committee, and stay until the client's CFO validates the gains.

Our values. These are filters for fit, not wall decorations. They govern how we hire as much as how we deploy.

• Impact, not reports. A hire is measured by what that engineer delivers in their first year, not by the number of CVs sent.

• Ship in weeks. A candidate who waits three weeks for an answer has signed elsewhere.

• The floor is the truth. A CV says one thing; the code, the references and the case say another. We believe the evidence.

• Ownership without borders. If a step of the process is broken, you fix it, even when it belongs to someone else.

• Humility as a method. "I don't understand this profile yet" is how good sourcing starts.

Job Description

Why we're hiring for this role

Some engineers can hold a room with a with an operations director in the morning and ship production code in the afternoon. They are the rarest profile in European B2B software so e decided to build them ourselves. We hire fast learning juniors, train them in our FDE School, and embed them alongside senior engineers who already do the job.

That plan depends on one thing above all: finding the people. Every Senior FDE we hire opens one junior seat, so the pace of senior hiring sets the pace of the whole company. Today, hiring runs on the time of people who have other jobs: an HR partner, our technical interviewers, the managing director. You are the first person whose whole job is this. The funnel, the scorecard discipline and the playbook you build become the standard for every recruiter who joins after you.

In a nutshell. You own the FDE hiring funnel from first message to signed offer, for every rank from junior engineer to senior. You find people who aren't looking and sell them a role most of them have never heard of. You filter them against a bar we don't lower, and you run a process fast enough that the best ones don't go elsewhere.

Your main responsibilities

• Source and approach directly. You reach juniors through engineering schools, apprenticeships and referrals. You reach seniors through direct approach of passive engineers in product companies, consultancies and industrial groups. You build the target lists, write the outreach and run the first conversation.

• Own the front half of our process:

  • CV screening and ranking against the FDE scorecard;

  • the 25-minute fact screening (OK/KO);

  • the reference and track-record verification;

  • the async exercise for junior candidates.

• You decide who moves forward, and your pass rate at the technical stage is your quality metric.

• Orchestrate the back half: technical sessions with our senior engineers, the values interview, reference checks and the final decision. You keep the calendar tight, collect written feedback after every step and prepare the decision file.

• Guard our candidate commitments. Every candidate gets written feedback at every stage, a GO / NO GO within a few business days and a final decision within four weeks of first contact. When we decide yes, a written offer goes out within 48 hours.

• Build the pipeline before we need it. You nurture a community of FDE candidates between openings, timed to FDE School cohort dates.

• Run the referral program with the group's HR and communication teams, and turn it from a one-off campaign into a steady source of hires.

• Measure the funnel. You track conversion per step, source of hire, time to offer, offer acceptance and how hires perform at 90 days. You send one weekly report, one page long, to the managing director.

• Prepare offers and contracts with the group's HR team, within our compensation grid.

On a day-to-day basis, you will

• Read a GitHub profile and a CV side by side, and decide in five minutes whether this person has shipped production code or only describes school projects.

• Call a senior data engineer who isn't looking and get a second conversation, by explaining what an FDE does better than our website does.

• Tell a hiring manager in a hurry that the candidate they like failed two facts, and hold the line.

• Debrief a technical interviewer within the hour and get written feedback into the candidate file the same day.

• Notice that most candidates drop between the Reference and track-record verification and the technical session, find out why, and fix it.

Who you'll work with

• You report to the Managing Director of The FDE Company. You work daily with the Devoteam HR business partner who owns the HR framework and the FDE School. You also work closely with the senior engineers who run our technical sessions and with the partner-side colleagues who handle senior background and reference checks. Behind you stand the HR, legal and employer-brand teams of the Devoteam group.

Qualifications

Must-haves 

• You've hired engineers yourself, end to end. You have 3+ years in technical recruitment, in-house or agency, including direct approach of passive software or data engineers. Bring the numbers: hires, roles, time to hire.

• You sell a role that doesn't exist yet. Most candidates have never heard the words "Forward Deployed Engineer". You can explain the role in two minutes to a fresh graduate and a senior engineer with ten years in production, and both want the next call.

• You can tell real engineering from a good-looking CV. You don't need to code. You do need to know what production code, a data pipeline and an API are, and to ask the questions that reveal whether someone actually built them.

• You hold the bar. You say no to candidates you like and to managers in a hurry, and you explain why in writing.

• You run a funnel like an operator. You track your numbers every week and change what isn't working.

• Professional French and English. Candidates and clients speak French; the company and its tooling run in English.

Nice-to-haves (we'll be glad, we won't require)

• You've been the first or second recruiter in a scaling company or a new business unit.

• You've hired in both consulting firms and product companies, and you know why engineers leave one for the other.

• You’ve hired for or worked with operations-heavy companies (manufacturing, supply chain, energy, logistics…_

•  You have exposure to industrial companies or engineering schools (Arts et Métiers, INSA, Centrale, Mines or equivalent).

• You already use AI tools in sourcing and screening, and you can show us how.

This role is probably not for you if…

• You measure yourself in CVs sent. We measure hires who are still delivering a year later.

• You want an established recruiting machine with a team around you. Here, you build it.

• Saying no makes you uncomfortable. Most of this job is a well-argued no.

• You need the process to be finished before you start. Version 1.2 exists; you'll write 2.0.

Career path

You are the first recruiter of a company built to scale across Europe. As the FDE corps grows, the role grows with it, into leading The FDE Company's talent team across countries. Beyond that, the talent and HR leadership of the Devoteam group is open to you. Scope here is earned by the quality of your hires, not by tenure.

Working conditions

Office / Remote : Paris office, hybrid

Travel : Occasional: engineering schools, FDE School sessions, recruiting events, and a few client sites so you see the job you hire for

Equipment : AI-native sourcing and productivity stack

Our hiring process

1. Application + written question / You / ~1h / Your CV, plus one page answering this question: how would you find ten Senior FDEs in Paris in 60 days? No cover letter.

2. Screen / HR partner / 30 min / Motivation, track record, mutual fit

3. Sourcing case / Managing Director / 60 min / You bring five anonymized profiles that match our FDE job description, plus the message you'd send to each. We discuss your choices.

4. Live screening / Senior FDE / 45 min / You run a fact screening on one of our engineers playing a candidate, then defend your OK/KO.

5. Values + leadership / Managing Director / 45 min / Working style, ownership stories, two references

6. Offer / 48h / Written offer within 48 hours of the decision

We hold ourselves to the same commitments we make to our engineers. You get written feedback at every stage and a GO / NO GO within a few business days. We reach a final decision within four weeks of first contact.

A word to our candidates

Most recruiters spend their careers filling roles someone else defined. This one asks you to define how a new profession gets hired in Europe. The profile is rare, the bar is high, and the people you bring in will decide whether AI actually works in the businesses they walk into. If you want your hires to be the measure of your work, we want to hear from you. We'll be honest with you the whole way through, and we'd ask the same back.

Additional Information

Le Groupe Devoteam œuvre pour l'égalité des chances, pour la promotion de ses collaboratrices et de ses collaborateurs au mérite et lutte activement contre toute forme de discrimination. Nous sommes persuadés que la diversité contribue à la créativité, au dynamisme et à l'excellence de notre organisation. Tous nos postes sont ouverts aux personnes en situation de handicap.