Portfolio Chief Technology Officer
The Carlyle Group
Paris, Ile-de-France, France (Hybrid)
Full Time
About the Role
About the role
A technology operating executive with past CTO experience in the software industry, working across a portfolio of European mid-market B2B technology and SaaS businesses. You partner with management teams and deal teams to shape and execute technology value-creation plans, from due diligence through the hold period to exit.
This is not a single-company CTO role: you act as a trusted advisor across many companies at once, prioritising where senior technology leadership drives the most enterprise value.
A technology operating executive with past CTO experience in the software industry, working across a portfolio of European mid-market B2B technology and SaaS businesses. You partner with management teams and deal teams to shape and execute technology value-creation plans, from due diligence through the hold period to exit.
This is not a single-company CTO role: you act as a trusted advisor across many companies at once, prioritising where senior technology leadership drives the most enterprise value.
Key responsibilities
- Value creation: define and drive technology value-creation agendas across portfolio companies: product architecture, scalability, technical debt, cloud and cost efficiency, security, data and AI enablement.
- Diligence & assessment: support technical diligence on new investments; assess engineering organisations, tech stacks and product readiness, and turn findings into actionable value-creation plans.
- Partner network: build and manage a network of trusted technology partners (implementation firms, specialist advisors, fractional leaders, vendors) to deliver at portfolio companies without large internal headcount.
- Leadership & talent: coach and mentor portfolio-company CTOs and engineering leaders; help assess, recruit and upgrade technology leadership where needed.
- Standards & sharing: establish reusable playbooks, benchmarks and best practices; drive cross-portfolio knowledge sharing.
- Exit readiness: position technology assets for exit by articulating the equity story, de-risking the stack and evidencing scalability to buyers.
Experience and background
- 15+ years of senior technology leadership (CTO, VP Engineering or equivalent), ideally scaling mid-market B2B SaaS businesses.
- A track record of measurable value creation in a private-equity, portfolio or operating-partner context is preferred.
- Deep, current expertise in modern SaaS architecture, cloud, data platforms, applied AI and AI in the software development lifecycle.
- Proven ability to deliver through partners and lean teams, and comfort with a leveraged operating model.
- Comfortable working across multiple companies, geographies and cultures in a European B2B context.
Competencies and attributes
- Investor mindset: translates technology into P&L, valuation and investor outcomes.
- Influence without authority; credible with founders, CEOs, deal teams and boards.
- A strong, active external network and the instinct to build and use relationships.
- Bias to action, comfort with ambiguity, and a collaborative fit in a team of functional experts.
- Prefers breadth over depth and enjoys novel problems; comfortable working through others and keeping executors honest.
- The maturity to see what creates value and the discipline to focus on it.
- Commercial: explains impact concisely to financial professionals.
- Working ability in other European languages besides English is a plus.
About Carlyle
The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) is a global investment firm with $485 billion of assets under management. Founded in 1987 in Washington, DC, it has more than 2,500 professionals in 28 offices across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and invests across Global Private Equity, Global Credit and Carlyle AlpInvest.
The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) is a global investment firm with $485 billion of assets under management. Founded in 1987 in Washington, DC, it has more than 2,500 professionals in 28 offices across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and invests across Global Private Equity, Global Credit and Carlyle AlpInvest.
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About The Carlyle Group
Paris, Ile-de-France, France