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TLDR: Cognyx is a fast-growing AI company reinventing Hardware engineering for the AI era. As our Founding Talent, your mandate is simple: close 15 A-player hires in 12 months, partner with every function head on org and talent, and build the people OS that scales us from 20 to 50+. Senior judgment, builder hands. Excited? Apply below!
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| 🕵️ Position aka / close to… | Talent Acquisition Manager, First HR, Founding HR, Head of People, People Lead, Talent & People Lead, People Ops Lead, First People Hire |
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| 📌 Location(s) | mostly in-person in our Paris HQ (Bastille) |
| 💶 Salary range | 70k (Learning) to 75k (At-Performance) + BSPCE + intéressement bonus. |
| 📑 Contract type | Freelance / French CDI (Syntec branch). Usual French perks (incl. ≈ 25+10 ≈ 35 days off /year) |
| 👏 Direct reporting line | Matthias, CEO. |
| ⏱️ Start Date | Q3 2026 |
Our Ambition Help the West re-industrialize by empowering thousands of manufacturers to engineer hardware products at software speed!
Our Mission Cognyx develops groundbreaking AI technology enabling Manufacturers to unlock a 10x acceleration in time-to-market, standardization level, and right-first-time production. By leveraging Knowledge Graphs and AI, Cognyx transforms hardware engineers' daily work by reconciling Product & Engineering data across different systems, facilitating faster collaboration, and automating engineering tasks.
Our Story Cognyx is a Seed-stage, VC-backed Tech company founded in early 2024 by repeat-Founders Matthias & Deon. We partnered with OSS Ventures, a leading startup studio with outstanding track record in the Manufacturing space. After rapid sales growth from world-class Enterprise logos, Cognyx has secured 10m€+ total funding from top-tier investors in France and Europe, along with renowned Business Angels from Tech and Manufacturing.
Our Values We established 4 cardinal values guiding our Operating philosophy: Speed (AI startups live or die depending how fast they ship), Team work (we will fail or succeed as a group), Excellence (we don’t settle for “mediocre” or “average”), Sincerity (we tell the truth to others, and to ourselves).
Our team Cognyx’s team is ≈ 20-people strong, mostly senior profiles working in-person in Paris. As part of our first employees in Paris, joining us in the early years, your individual contribution will have a decisive impact on our future trajectory. You’ll work directly with experienced Founders who have built successful companies before — an excellent opportunity if you’re looking to grow into a founder or entrepreneur yourself!
Learn More: Visit our website, Careers @ Cognyx, or our :linkedin_logo: LinkedIn page.
We just closed a milestone Seed round to win the AI Hardware Engineering category. We're 20 people today, with several enterprise reference clients (Forvia, Trèves, Decathlon…) and a pipeline of 8+ Fortune 500 prospects in active engagement. The next 18 months are existential: we need to double the team without diluting the bar.
Right now, hiring still runs too much as a side-project for founders and function heads. That's not scalable, and it's already costing us velocity. We need a senior, builder-mindset Talent leader who can own recruiting end-to-end, raise the bar with every function head, and make hiring one of Cognyx's core operating strengths.
This is the first full-time Talent hire at Cognyx. The systems you ship become the OS for how we scale to 40, 80, and beyond.