Strategic Tech Architect for R&D Alignment

Alta Ares; Paris; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Alta Ares is seeking a hybrid strategy/engineering professional to rigorously evaluate technology choices and align them with business priorities. You will challenge R&D and Innovation roadmaps, perform capability audits, and influence technology strategy with a business lens, reporting to the Strategy & Operations Director.

This role requires strong strategic thinking, technical credibility, and the ability to communicate complex trade-offs to senior leaders, ensuring economically sound

Qualifications

• 5-6 years of overall experience with an engineering background.
• Hybrid technical/business profile with exposure to strategy and execution.
• Ability to translate technical issues into business implications and priorities.
• Experience challenging senior stakeholders with rigor and independence.

Responsibilities

• Challenge R&D/Innovation roadmaps and architecture decisions with a business lens.
• Conduct ongoing technology watch to inform the roadmap and strategic decisions.
• Audit capabilities across skills, tools, infrastructure, and dependencies.
• Contribute to defining technology strategy and resource allocation.
• Produce syntheses and recommendations for COMEX on tech-strategy topics.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Technical understanding

Independent judgment

Stakeholder management

Financial acumen

Communication skills

Education

Engineering degree

Job description

About the companythe company is an air defense Neoprime. We build AI-guided interceptors to counter drones and cruise missiles, along with the software platform that powers them.

Our customers are NATO-aligned militaries and defense institutions, and our systems are regularly deployed during live exercises and operational demonstrations across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Founded in 2024, we have grown to 90 people, raised over $60M, and increased revenue 40× this year. We are now entering a new phase of international expansion, industrial scaling, fundraising, and product development.

ContextWe are looking for hybrid profile, sitting at the intersection of strategy and engineering, able to rigorously evaluate the technology choices made by the R&D and innovation teams, audit our internal capabilities, and challenge product/tech trade-offs with a business lens. This is not a technical team management role, but a role of constructive counter-power and strategic alignment between engineering and business priorities.

You will ensure that our technological decisions (R&D, innovation, architecture choices, build vs buy, roadmap prioritization) are aligned with overall strategy, economically sound, and robust by actively challenging the relevant teams rather than rubber-stamping their proposals.

Role & Missions

Strategic and technical challenge

• Challenge the technical choices and roadmaps proposed by R&D and the Innovation team (architecture, stack, prioritization, build vs buy vs partner)
• Question the underlying assumptions behind technical projects (feasibility, ROI, strategic alignment, technical debt incurred)
• Produce well-argued, independent analyses not rubber-stamped validations

Technology and market watch

• Run continuous technical and technology watch (competitors, emerging technologies, market trends, new tools, and platforms) to keep the company's decisions informed by the state of the art
• Identify technologies or approaches that could create a competitive advantage, or expose the company to being left behind
• Turn watch findings into actionable inputs for the R&D/Innovation roadmap and for COMEX-level strategic discussions
• Build and maintain a structured watch process (sources, cadence, internal distribution) rather than ad hoc monitoring

Capability audit

• Regularly map and assess the company's technical capabilities (skills, tools, infrastructure, external dependencies)
• Identify areas of risk, over-investment, under-investment, or critical dependency
• Benchmark our capabilities against the market and competitors

Technology strategy

• Contribute to defining the company's technology strategy alongside the Strategy & Operations Director
• Assess build, buy, partner, or acquisition opportunities on technology topics
• Inform R&D resource allocation decisions with a strategic and financial lens

Reporting and governance

• Produce syntheses and recommendations for COMEX on tech-strategy topics
• Set up tracking indicators on technical execution vs. commitments made
• Participate in R&D/Innovation committees as an independent strategic voice

Candidate profile

Experience

5-6 years of overall experience, engineering background (degree in engineering or equivalent)

Ideal trajectory: 2-3 years of hands-on technical execution, followed by 2-3 years in a hybrid technical/business role e.g. Engineer → Technical Product Manager, Engineer → tech-focused strategy consulting, or Engineer → Chief of Staff to a CTO/VP Engineering

Profiles with only pure execution experience (no exposure to business trade-offs) or only early technical experience followed by years of generalist consulting (no longer technically credible) are not a fit for this role

Given the seniority level, the candidate should compensate for limited years of experience with either deep, recognized expertise in a specific technical domain (enough to be seen as a peer by R&D on that topic) or a strong, proven track record of challenging senior stakeholders from a strategy/consulting background.

Technical skills

Hands-on experience in a technical environment (dev, data, tech product, architecture, not consulting-only exposure)

Demonstrated ability to understand architecture choices and technical trade-offs, and to assess their relevance

Comfortable engaging as a peer with CTOs, tech leads, and senior engineers

Able to speak in concrete, specific terms about a real technical decision they challenged or questioned

Strategy / business skills

Ability to translate technical issues into business implications, and vice versa

Critical soft skills

Strong critical thinking and independence of judgment

Able to distinguish a genuine technical risk from a mere communication gap

Natural credibility: earns legitimacy through the rigor of the analysis, not through hierarchy

Success indicators (by month 12)

• Technical capability map completed and kept up to date A structured technology watch process in place, with regular outputs reaching R&D/Innovation and COMEX Number of R&D/Innovation decisions meaningfully redirected following a well-argued challenge Perceived quality of recommendations by COMEX and by the technical teams themselves Measurable reduction in the gap between technical roadmap and strategic priorities Find more English Speaking Jobs in France on Arbeitnow