Procurement Lead - Functional Expert (H/F)

OUR PROMISE: BECOME A CUSTOMER VALUE MANAGER WITHIN 6 MONTHS The Customer Value Manager (CVM) role at Tacto is an exciting career path where your immediate impact is visible to both you and the customers on a daily basis. It combines consulting-style problem solving, daily collaboration with customers, and strategic responsibility for driving measurable value. Normally, professionals enter this world after gaining experience in consulting or similar roles for 2y+. With the Pioneer Program, we offer you a fast-track entry: in just 6 months you will develop the skills, confidence, and knowledge to work directly with our customers’ leadership teams, manage daily customer interactions, and deliver your own projects that help procurement leaders in the European industry capture the full value of our software. The Deal: Join as a Customer Value Associate (Pioneer) → Master our product and consulting toolkit → Deliver first measurable customer impact → Graduate into a Customer Value Manager role with your own customer portfolio after 6 months. You’re not joining to “maybe” get promoted - if you meet the clear milestones, you will become a Customer Value Manager after those 6 months. WHY JOIN THE PIONEER PROGRAM? * Master core Consulting skills: Analyze customer data, identify savings, build business cases, manage C-level stakeholders and deliver tangible outcomes to help industry leaders drive real change. * Customer-facing from day one: Daily interaction with customer procurement teams, exposure to C-level stakeholders, and ownership of customer deliverables. * Commercial + strategic: Become a strategic sparring partner for our customers and combine measurable savings & strategic transformation projects with long-term account development. * Intensive coaching: 1:1 mentorship with an experienced CVM, weekly learning journal, daily shadowing and debriefs, and a personal development plan tailored to your strengths. * Cross-functional exposure: As a CVM you sit between Product Development and Sales. You will learn firsthand how Sales, Product, and Engineering work together in one of Europe's fastest growing Startups (2x YoY Growth), backed by Sequioa and Index. * Startup culture: At Tacto we are ambitious, passionate, humble and supportive. We believe in the power to act & proactivity - no matter if you are a fresh graduate, you will have full ownership from day one and have the opportunity to drive real change also within the company YOUR 6 MONTH JOURNEY Months 1-2: Bootcamp & Shadowing * Gain more knowledge on procurement basics & do a product deep dive * Learn about consulting & communication skills * Shadow real customer calls & onboarding sessions * Cross-functional exchange: 1 week in Product Management (refinements, plannings etc.) → Outcome: You know our product inside out and develop fundamental skills for handling customers Months 3-4: Guided Practice * CVM playbook: Health & upsell management, objection handling * Take ownership of first real work packages (e.g. risk management, savings analysis) * Spend up to a full week on-site with one of our customers to experience procurement reality in the industrial companies * Present results directly to customers (with mentor support) * Cross-functional exchange: 1 week in Business Development → Outcome: First measurable customer impact, positive feedback from stakeholders Months 5-6: Ownership & Graduation * Learn about negotiating, category strategies and many more topics through an exclusive training with a procurement expert * Lead your first project (e.g. savings case, supplier evaluation). * Deliver your Capstone Project: a customer-facing presentation with measurable savings or transparency impact. * Graduation Day: Official promotion to Customer Value Manager. → Outcome: Customer-facing project with validated impact, strong customer feedback, ready to own a portfolio WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR: * Impact-driven graduates from top universities, ready to translate their academic excellence into real-world results and build long-lasting relationships with our customers. * Ambitious and motivated minds who want to grow with us - no idea is too big or too small. We value people who bring fresh perspectives and are excited to enrich our team with their own suggestions. * Proactive team players with strong curiosity and problem-solving skills, ready to learn, adapt, and thrive in a dynamic environment. * Previous experience - such as internships in procurement or consulting - is a plus, but not a requirement. * Strong communication skills in both German and English Overall, we are not looking for the "perfect" profile here. We are looking for someone who wants to unfold their potential and has a passion for our customers. Therefore, don't hesitate to apply - even if you are not sure whether you meet the requirements. INTERVIEW PROCESS 1. Say Hello – 30min with our Chief of Staff 2. Customer Value Chat – 30min with a Senior CVM 3. Onsite in Munich - 2:30 h of discussing a case with the team and gaining more insights on the Tacto life OUR BACKGROUND Tacto is building the intelligence layer that connects AI to the physical world of manufacturing, starting with procurement. AI is transforming every industry, but it stops at the factory gate. The knowledge that holds manufacturing together - part costs, suppliers, materials - is scattered across systems and people. Over 50% of a product's cost originates from suppliers, making procurement the single largest cost lever in manufacturing and the missing connection between the digital and the physical world. Yet it still runs on Excel and legacy systems. We're changing that with our Procurement Intelligence Platform, trusted by hundreds of companies running billions of Euros of material. Based in Munich, we are 100+ passionate builders who are in-office, with high expectations, fast growth, and a lot of fun. We are supported by >€50m from Sequoia, Index, and Europe's leading tech entrepreneurs and industry veterans. WHY IT MATTERS Manufacturing forms Europe's economic backbone, driving a fourth of Europe's GDP and providing over 30% of jobs. These hidden champions and global market leaders manufacture the physical world around us, from the machines that build our cities to the medical devices that save lives. But the world is changing. The US dominates the digital world of bits. China is scaling the world of atoms, manufacturing at unprecedented speed and scale. Geopolitics are more uncertain than ever. Europe's strength lies in its deep industrial knowledge through generations of engineering. Manufacturing worldwide runs on European machines and software. But that heritage is only an advantage if we leverage it in the age of AI. Tacto builds the AI that connects Atoms and Bits, empowering our Industrial Base to Stay Stronger and building a lighthouse for European tech. WHAT WE OFFER The people at Tacto are passionate about building the organization, growing themselves, and our product while having fun and being real. We have high expectations, great talent density, and a culture where your ambition, performance, and agency are what count - not where you come from or how big your ego is. You'll grow at the forefront of AI, have real ownership and impact, and be surrounded by the best people in their field who challenge you and make you better every day. That is demanding and rewarding, but that's where we thrive. Besides that you have: * Money: Competitive salary & equity in the company with real upside, so you are invested in our success * Workplace: A vibrant in-office culture (> 4 days/week) in a beautiful office in central Munich * Development: A development budget and regular exposure to exceptional people, e.g., Lunch & Learns, peer mentoring, external speakers * Time off: 26 + 4 vacation days per year (4 fixed “company rest days”) as well as regular off-sites and team events * Health: Wellpass membership, of course, a fruit basket (!), and access to Jobrad, for your health * Family & Social Security: Voluntary pension contribution, voluntary KITA subsidy for your children Tacto is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.

About Terranova Backed by leading deep tech VCs, Terranova builds intelligent robotic systems to terraform the Earth itself - lifting land, restoring wetlands, and protecting critical infrastructure from floods. Our mission is to preserve the built environment, create new habitats, and usher in an era of abundance. Our work supports climate resilience, disaster recovery, housing development, and defense across the United States and beyond. We’re assembling a world-class team that wants to work on something real, physical, and civilization-scale. If you want your work to reshape the world (literally), this is the place to do it. What to Expect We are looking for a COO or a VP Operations who can function as a true company operator: owning execution across engineering, field operations, manufacturing, recruiting, finance, customer delivery, and internal systems. This is a cofounder-level role at a very early company. This person will lead from the front, run an extremely tight operating cadence, and make sure the hundreds of things required to keep projects moving get done. The upside is meaningful equity, ownership, and the chance to help build one of the defining hard-tech companies of the next decade. Key Responsibilities ● Own company-wide execution across engineering, operations, deployments, hiring, finance, procurement, legal coordination, and customer delivery. ● Build and run the operating system of the company: weekly cadence, project plans, dashboards, accountability loops, and decision-making processes. ● Manage and motivate a high-intensity technical team while earning credibility with engineers, field operators, and founders. ● Drive field deployments from planning through completion, ensuring projects do not slip because of logistics, staffing, materials, permitting, vendors, or customer coordination. ● Work directly with the CEO to support fundraising, board communication, strategic planning, and company priorities. ● Support GTM and customer execution across PE firms, developers, infrastructure owners, government agencies, USACE, and other defense-adjacent customers. ● Recruit, evaluate, and help close exceptional talent across technical, operational, and commercial roles. ● Thrive at the pace and intensity of early-stage startup life, including long days, and field hours when needed. Requirements ● Exceptional operational judgment, intensity, and ownership. ● Experience leading strategy, operations, deployment, product, or company-building functions at a high-growth deep tech, robotics, aerospace, defense, infrastructure, or hardware startup. ● Ability to manage technical teams and make high-quality decisions around complex engineering and field operations, even without being the deepest technical expert in the room. ● Strong comfort with customers, investors, board members, vendors, and government / defense stakeholders. ● Willingness to work on-site in Berkeley, CA. ● U.S. work authorization. We cannot sponsor H-1B visas at this time. Preferred Skills & Experience ● Prior experience as a VP / Director / Head of Strategy or Operations at a deep tech company. ● Prior experience as a COO, CPO, CTO, VP Ops, or GM experience at a Series B or later hardware startup. ● Experience deploying products that are hard to sell and hard to build. ● Founder or founder-level operating experience. Important to have seen 0->1. ● Strong finance, strategic planning, and fundraising fluency. Ideal Archetype ● A high-aptitude operator 3-15 years into their career who has already scaled unusually fast. They need to be the smartest person at our company. Wicked, cunning, fluent in the dark arts, blurry in pictures. ● Someone who could plausibly be a founder, but who chooses our rocket ship over starting from zero. ● Has built or run something real in robotics, aerospace, defense, infrastructure, construction tech, or complex hardware. ● Can walk into a messy early-stage company, create order, raise the bar, and make everyone more intense and effective. ● Has enough technical taste to manage engineers, enough commercial judgment to help sell, and enough operational force to keep the whole machine moving. ● Comes from a flagship deep tech company, an Elon-founded company, or a serious venture-backed hardware company. We are optimizing for aptitude, intensity, and company pedigree over title.