CCO & Deputy-CEO

Circulate; Stockholms kommun; On-site; SEK 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity package

Dynamic work environment

Mission-driven team

Job summary

Circulate is seeking a CCO/Deputy-CEO to join the founding team in Stockholm. This role involves managing daily operations and leading commercial strategies. The ideal candidate should have startup leadership experience, the capability to drive sales, and build relationships with partners. This position offers equity and the chance to help create a sustainable packaging industry solution. You will work closely with the CEO and CTO in a dynamic environment.

Qualifications

• Experience founding or co-founding a company or senior operational responsibility.
• Hands-on experience, preferably in startups or consulting.
• Strong skills in leadership and managing teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead the company's strategy and operations.
• Manage relationships with suppliers and partners.
• Oversee outbound sales and commercial processes.

Skills

Startup experience

Commercial responsibility

Leadership

Sales

Problem-solving

Job description

Location: Stockholm (on-site at Norrsken Impact Hub) Type: Full-time Equity: Attractive equity package on a co-founder level Salary: Seed-stage market salary, increasing after 12 months or at Series A — whichever comes later Start date: As soon as possible. The world can't wait.

Imagine a world where we consume only what the planet can regenerate, packaging is circular, and waste is a thing of the past. At Circulate, we are gathering the best and the brightest within tech and business, working shoulder to shoulder, building a European company driving that vision — at a genuine inflection point, with real traction. If you are ready to apply your skills, ambition, and drive to one of the most critical challenges of our lifetime, this is the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity you have been waiting for.

We are not hiring an employee. We are looking for a partner in crime to help us build the most profitable impact company to date.

About Circulate

We consume way too much. In wealthy countries, we have already used up our share of the planet's yearly resources by April. We'd need to cut consumption by around 75% to live within our means.

The easiest place to start? Packaging. The shortest-lived, lowest-value use of natural resources on the planet. Every European throws away ~200 kg of packaging waste a year.

But the packaging industry is ancient, analogue, and impossible to navigate — no shared system, no common data, no easy way to compare, switch, or report. And for the brands buying it, packaging is never their core focus: they lack the time, expertise, and information to handle it well, and the complexity is wildly disproportionate to the resources they can throw at it. A desperate gap for technology to fill.

We are changing that.

Circulate is building the foundational data layer for the packaging industry — mapping every item, every supplier, every spec into one structured single source of truth. On top of it, we run the workflows the industry actually needs: procurement, restock, forecasting, compliance reporting, substitution, and a supplier marketplace. Each one feeds the data layer denser as it runs.

The timing isn't a coincidence. The EU's new Packaging Regulation (PPWR) forces every brand and product company to hold thousands of data points on their packaging and report regularly from August 2026. They need a system. We are it.

Today: 3,000+ structured SKUs from suppliers across most European countries, happy customers in every European country we've sold to, ~10 MSEK in gross sales in 2025 (3× from 2024), and a tight team of six — with the goal of staying under ten for as long as we can. Backed by J12, Antler, Almi, Philian and some of the best Angels in the region. The product is built. The market is pulling. Now we are building the commercial engine to match.

The Role

We are looking for a commercially driven rockstar and CCO/Deputy-CEO to join our founding team alongside Karolina (CEO and founder) and Lars (CTO).

Think of this as the internal CEO role — the counterpart to Karolina as the external CEO. She owns product vision, the big customer pitches, the investor stage, and the public face of Circulate. You run the company around that - setting the goals, the strategy, managing the team day-to-day, holding people accountable for performance, and making sure everyone knows where we are heading and why. We need a boss.

You also own the commercial engine from day one, ensuring we meet our commercial goals — outbound, partnerships, vendor and buyer relations, and the customer-facing organisation. This is a builder's job: take a data-infrastructure product to market against a regulatory clock that is already ticking, and bring structure to everything else as you go.

You hold the CCO/Deputy-CEO title from day one. In the packaging and procurement world, this matters — you need to walk into any room as a peer. This is designed to be your company too.

What You'll Own

Day one — accelerate our sales:

• Commercial engine: Outbound sales and pipeline — building and running the commercial process end-to-end against ambitious revenue growth targets
• External relationships: Suppliers, marketplace vendors, buyers, channel partners — you are the face of Circulate in the market
• Customer-facing operations: Structure, prioritisation, and follow-through across the customer journey

Then — become our internal CEO:

• Internal CEO function: Setting company goals, leading the strategy work, holding people accountable, keeping the team focused, and bringing rhythm to how we run
• Organisational leadership: Team structure, hiring, and resource allocation — increasingly taking over areas currently held by Karolina and the board, so she can go all-in on product vision, key customer moments, and fundraising
• Board & investor relations: Prepping board meetings, sending investor updates, managing investor relationships, and partnering with Karolina on fundraising — she shows up to the pitch, you run the process around it

Who We Think You Are

• You have founded or co-founded a company, or held senior operational and commercial responsibility in a fast-moving, client-facing environment. Previous startup experience is highly valued — or, if you come from consulting, you are an exceptionally hands‑on ex‑MBB who lived in the work, not in the deck, and who has done real things in life beyond a polished CV (side jobs while studying, events you organised, scrappy ventures of your own).
• You are a doer. This is a lean, AI‑leveraged team — no big bench of juniors to delegate the groundwork to. The work is yours to do, AI is your leverage. Status-driven seniority and ego are the wrong fit here.
• Speed is key. Execution and 'just try it out' eat strategy for breakfast. You move first, learn fast, and adjust — you don't wait for the plan to be perfect.
• High floor matters more than high ceiling. Startups never give you the time, resources, or setting to do your best work. What we need is someone whose worst is still really good — you can figure most things out and execute them at a consistently high standard, fast, without supervision.
• You can lead and run a company — set goals, hold people accountable, drive performance, and keep the team focused without needing anyone above you to do it
• You can hold your own with a board and investors — preparing materials, running updates, and partnering on fundraising
• Strong externally — you can sell, build trust, and show up credibly with customers, partners, and suppliers at a senior level, and you can hold your own in a conversation about why packaging is fundamentally a data problem, not a procurement one
• You create structure rather than waiting for it, and bring predictability to the teams around you
• Experience in marketplaces, procurement, packaging, supply chain systems, or compliance/regulatory tech is a plus — but not a requirement

What You Get

• Significant co-founder‑level ownership via warrants on favourable terms — reflecting the scope and weight of the role
• Engaged co‑founders — Karolina, increasingly focused on product and fundraising, and Lars, a superstar tech profile leading our in‑house build
• A dynamic, fun work environment at Norrsken Impact Hub in central Stockholm — surrounded by brilliant, business‑minded, mission‑driven people who share your ambition to build real companies solving some of humanity’s biggest problems
• The chance to make your time count. How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

How To Apply

Apply through this page, or — if you'd rather start with a conversation — reach out directly to [e-mail]. Either way, tell us what you've built, what you've sold, and what kind of operator you are. We value directness.

Join us in our mission to create a world where we consume only what the planet can regenerate, and where packaging waste becomes a thing of the past. We can't wait to hear how you'd help us get there.

Circulate is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.