Head of AI, Technology & Infrastructure

Soil Capital is on a mission to regenerate over 10 million hectares of land by 2030, addressing our environmental and food security challenges through regenerative and low‑carbon agriculture. As a leading expert in this field, we have developed the first payment for ecosystem services program for farmers in Europe.

Through our certified programme and our platform, Soil Capital leads the food and ag sector transformation by engaging with blue‑chip organisations who seek to deliver on their environmental commitments and build supply chain resilience. These businesses purchase regenerative units, acting as an incentive for farmers to measure and earn improvement in their agricultural practices.

Our technology supports farmers by allowing them to efficiently and accurately measure farming practices, as well as the GHG balance of their farm which we then audit and certify to generate certificates. This helps farmers understand the levers to accelerate their adoption of regenerative practices.

In the past ten years, Soil Capital has established itself as a thought leader and a driver of change at scale in France, the U.K. and Belgium. Pursuing its ambitious growth trajectory, it is now expanding geographical and product scopes.

About the Role

Set and champion the technology

• Define and articulate a medium‑ to long‑term technology and data vision and roadmap aligned with Soil Capital's business strategy, product, and data ambitions.
• Bring an outside‑in perspective: stay ahead of industry trends in AI/ML, data engineering, automation and AgTech, and translate them into concrete opportunities for the company.
• Act as the voice of technology at the management level — ensuring the tech roadmap gets the space, investment and prioritisation it deserves alongside product and business priorities.
• Own automation strategy, including positioning in customer environments (MRV suite).
• Co‑own the AI strategy with the data and product team.
• Own platform & data analytics architecture.
• Coach and elevate the engineering team by fostering a culture of technological curiosity, AI fluency, experimentation and continuous learning.
• Empower the team to proactively identify opportunities to enrich the platform.

Drive AI, data and automation implementation

• Own automation agenda: identify where AI/ML, large language models, workflow automation (e.g. n8n) approaches can create new products or dramatically improve operations.
• Support the Data team in shipping AI based solutions.
• Accelerate the path from proof‑of‑concept to production — bridging the gap between data science exploration and scalable, reliable platform features.
• Sharpen the data strategy so it is crisp enough to support the company's global ambitions, including data architecture, data flows and reporting.

Provide architectural and technical leadership

• Serve as the senior technical sounding board for the dev and data leads, bringing deep experience to challenge, guide and coach on architecture, design patterns and best practices.
• Ensure sound, well‑informed technical decisions — especially on infrastructure (Kubernetes, cloud), data platforms (Fabric, data lake) and platform scalability.
• Help the team navigate trade‑offs between business urgency, medium term targets, and technical health (performance, security, technical debt).

Bridge technology and business

• Work closely with the Head of Product, Head of Data and our Developer Lead to balance the functional, data and technical roadmaps, ensuring neither dominates at the expense of the other.
• Translate complex technical constraints and opportunities into language that the management team and board can act on.
• Provide the counterweight that gives the technical and development team enough room to invest in long‑term platform quality alongside short‑term feature delivery.
• Actively participate in regular internal sales status meetings to ensure a good understanding of the market and business needs.

Management

• You will be supported in your goals by a team of two: a DevOps and a Head Of Technology.

What we are looking for

Experience & expertise

• 10+ years in software engineering or platform/infrastructure roles, with significant experience in a senior architect, VP Engineering or Head of Technology capacity.
• Deep, hands‑on background in modern cloud infrastructure (Kubernetes, cloud‑native architectures), data platforms and AI/ML technologies.
• Proven track record of defining and executing a technology strategy in a product‑led, data‑intensive environment — ideally in a scale‑up or fast‑growing SaaS context.
• Experience accelerating the productisation of data science and AI work (POC > MVP > production).

Mindset & leadership style

• Visionary and curious: You proactively stay ahead of technical evolution and have a strong self‑driven appetite for exploring emerging technologies and bringing concrete, actionable ideas back to the team.
• A persuasive communicator who can represent technology credibly at the executive and board level, and who naturally earns trust from engineers.
• Collaborative, not hierarchical — you lead through expertise, coaching and shared conviction rather than authority.
• Comfortable making trade‑offs between business priorities and technical investments, and articulating the reasoning clearly.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with AgTech, environmental data, carbon accounting or climate‑related platforms.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric, data lakehouse architectures or model‑agnostic AI platform design.
• French and/or Dutch language skills (working language is English).

Here’s what we offer

• A mission‑driven career: Join a company on a mission to transform the farming & food sectors, with a team driven by and committed to our mission.
• Flexible holidays policy: Take the holidays you need, while coordinating with your team and respecting the demands of your role.
• Health insurance with Alan for you and your family.
• Reimbursement if you come to the office by public transport.
• Flexible remote work: You can work remotely 2 days per week, with flexibility, provided you coordinate with your colleagues.
• An excellent office in Louvain‑la‑Neuve, Belgium (or possibly our offices of London or Paris), and the ability to work remotely on a hybrid basis.
• Company events and travels: Join quarterly company events and visit our offices in Paris (France) and London (UK).

Our Hiring Process

1. First interview with Charlotte, People Specialist, during 30 minutes.
2. Hiring lead interview with Guillaume, COO, for a 45‑minute deep dive discussion.
3. Technical case interview with Jelle (Head of Data) and David (Development Lead).
4. Last call with someone from the leadership team.

Soil Capital is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage applications from all candidates who meet the job requirements, regardless of their race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, or disability.

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