Head of IT

Zadient Technologies is a French company developing an innovative process for producing silicon carbide with exceptionally low production costs and an unprecedented level of purity. The company operates upstream in the SiC semiconductor value chain, manufacturing the raw material from which SiC wafers and chips are produced.

Since its funding round in November 2025, Zadient has been accelerating its R&D efforts as well as its pilot activities in crystal growth and production technologies.

We are seeking an experienced and knowledgeable head of IT to design, build, and operate the company’s IT foundations as we scale from an early-stage startup toward industrial and manufacturing readiness.

Based on these robust infrastructure and data security pillars, the scope will progressively expand to support industrial use cases, manufacturing constraints, and increased security and compliance expectations.

1. Key Responsibilities and Activities

IT Foundations and Data Security (Hands on):

• Design and implement a cloud-first IT architecture with security-by-design principles
• Implement, identity and define access management (IAM, SSO, MFA, role-based access control)
• Define and enforce data security policies, including data access segregation (R&D, operations, corporate), protection, backup, recovery, retention of sensitive and proprietary data
• Deploy and manage employee devices (MDM, disk encryption)
• Define IT standards, documentation, and operational procedures
• Ensure reliable and secure day-to-day IT operations and user support

Industrial Readiness & Manufacturing IT Support

• Prepare the IT environment to support industrial and manufacturing use cases
• Ensure IT systems are compatible with current R&D tools and systems and future manufacturing tools and systems, with data traceability and audit requirements, with reliability and availability constraints typical of industrial environments
• Collaborate with engineering, R&D, and operations teams to translate manufacturing constraints into IT requirements
• Support integration with future systems such as manufacturing tools, data platforms, or industrial software (without owning MES/OT at this stage)
• Strengthen security posture in line with customer, partner, and regulatory expectations
• Contribute to business continuity and risk management planning

Run, Optimize and Scale

• Stabilize and optimize the IT environment
• Improve automation, monitoring, and cost control
• Structure vendor relationships and external partners
• Prepare the company for growth (50–100+ employees)
• Contribute to the long‑term IT roadmap and organization design

2. Required Qualifications and Experience

Must have:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or another technology field, or equivalent experience.
• 5–10+ years of experience in IT infrastructure, cloud, or IT leadership roles
• Proven experience with data security, access control, and infrastructure protection
• Experience on design, development, and maintenance of solutions for the business units following the IT standards and procedures
• Proven people and performance management skills and experience in managing global vendors and IT outsourcing activities
• Knowledge on ERP and other business solutions like MES, SCM, PLM, HCM and BI tools
• Ability to design IT systems that support reliability, traceability, and industrial constraints
• Strong understanding of IT governance and compliance standards
• Truly interested in emerging technologies
• Self‑motivated, organized, and resilient – making sure to see things through to the end to accomplish successful results.
• High autonomy, pragmatic mindset, strong execution capability suited to small‑scale company
• Comfortable working independently and cross‑functionally in a multidisciplinary and international team

Nice to have:

• Experience in industrial, deeptech, R&D, or manufacturing-related environments
• Exposure to semiconductor or wafer-related industries is a plus, but not required
• Familiarity with DevOps principles, automation, or compliance frameworks
• Knowledge on SAP systems and landscapes

3. Specific conditions

Employment type: full‑time contract

4. What we offer

• Competitive salary - based on profile and experience - and flexible working conditions
• Opportunity to work on the next generation of SiC crystal growth and wafer manufacturing equipment in an agile and innovation‑driven environment.
• A unique context to build the IT foundations from scratch, for an industry where Manufacturing Systems, Data & AI are key factors of success.
• Ability to highly impact on security, reliability, and scalability of the company
• A dynamic and interdisciplinary work environment and an international team
• A dynamic, interdisciplinary work environment within an international team.
• Early involvement in an exciting project, with strong growth potential as the company scales.

SiC is a critical material for energy transition, enabling technologies such as electric vehicles, electric rail systems, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and aerospace applications. SiC chips are used in equipment such as inverters and chargers in electric vehicles, significantly improving driving range as well as charging speed and efficiency compared with silicon-based chips—resulting in substantial CO₂ reductions.

In April 2025, Zadient Technologies was selected to join the inaugural STEP Scale‑Up funding program of the European Innovation Council. The company is one of seven awardees chosen from hundreds of applicants, recognized as a leading growth‑stage company in one of Europe’s critical technology sectors.