Founding Operations Lead

Pioneers; Paris; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Pioneers, a Day-0 accelerator based in Paris, is hiring a Founding Operations lead to build the operating system that supports Europe’s top founders from batch to Demo Day. You’ll own program operations, sourcing, investment processes, and portfolio support, shaping how we discover, fund, and back teams with potential.

You’ll work closely with founders and the team, taking ownership of the end-to-end workflows, mentor networks, and execution rigor, with a path toward COO-level responsibility.

Qualifications

• Senior hire with track record in operations for early-stage startups.
• Ability to design and optimize end-to-end operating systems.
• Comfort with both process and judgement in decision-making.

Responsibilities

• Own program operations end-to-end including discovery, build sprint, and IC processes.
• Design and manage a deliberate, thesis-led sourcing pipeline.
• Define the investment evaluation framework and support co-investment workflows.
• Build founder readiness and downstream introductions for follow-on financing.

Skills

Startup operations

Portfolio management

Strategic planning

Job description

We’re hiring a Founding Operations lead at Pioneers!

The mission:

Help build the machine that finds, backs, and supports the best founders in Europe.

Pioneers is a Day-0 accelerator at Station F, operating between Paris and Silicon Valley. We’re the earliest investors out there: we back founders before there’s a company, match them with cofounders, and back the strongest teams with capital through to Demo Day. Our portfolio includes founders out of MIT and NASA, an ex-Stanford researcher, and a YC-backed team.

This job leads to a COO-level role. Everything below is yours to lead and optimize, not to execute against someone else’s playbook.

What you’d own:

Program operations:

the batch playbook end-to-end. You design and run discovery, the build sprint, and the investment committee process as one system, and you own the mentor network - who’s in it, what they’re asked for, and whether founders actually get value from them.

Sourcing:

a deliberate, thesis-led pipeline. You decide which channels we build, where the people we want actually are, and you run the pipeline with the same rigor a fund runs its deal flow.

Investment process:

the evaluation framework and the IC process behind it - how teams get assessed, on what, by whom, and how a decision gets made. You also support execution on the instruments themselves and on co-investment processes.

Portfolio support:

founder-readiness. You build the processes that get companies fundable, and you make the downstream introductions that turn that into follow-on financing actually raised.

Who we're looking for:

We're open to many types of profiles, but a bonus would be someone who has experience supporting early-stage startups. You know which parts of this are process and which parts are judgment. This is a senior hire - it’s not a first ops job, and it’s not a generalist ops job with a better title.

You’ll be around founders building hard technical things. You need to be able to read a paper, ask a decent question, and form your own view on whether the team in front of you is worth backing.