Karos is the European leader in carpooling for commuters. After building a strong footprint across key markets and establishing strategic partnerships with public authorities and employers, we are entering a new phase of accelerated growth.
We are hiring a Chief Sales Officer (CSO) to join the Executive Committee and lead this next scaling chapter -structuring a high-performance sales organization, driving predictable revenue at scale and turning market leadership into sustained commercial dominance across Europe.
Location : Paris, Toulouse or Köln (Germany)
Key Responsibilities:
1) Land strategy & prioritization
• Define and continuously refine the global Land strategy by country and segment.
• Identify and own the top priority targets, with clear sequencing and focus.
• Make explicit trade-offs on where to invest time, seniority, and resources.
2) Sales organization & leadership
• Define a simple, scalable Sales operating model (“who does what”).
• Build, onboard and develop a high-performing Public authorities and Employers Sales team.
• Ensure strong local execution through clearly assigned regional ownership.
3) Deal execution & bid excellence
• Lead disciplined deal management: opportunity reviews, next-step clarity, risk identification.
• Personally sponsor the most strategic and complex deals, including tenders.
• Set the quality bar for sales materials, bid structure, and client interactions.
4) Forecasting & predictability
• Own the Land forecast: what will close, when, and why.
• Challenge weak or risky deals early.
• Ensure minimal gap between forecasted and actual results.
5) Deal quality & profitability
• Guarantee “clean” deals: controlled discounts, coherent contract duration.
• Deals in line with service packages and with Operation & Product/Tech workload planning capabilities.
• Realistic ramp-up and delivery assumptions.
• Work closely with Finance and Legal to secure fast, clear validations.
6) Cross-functional coordination
• With the CRO (Expand): ensure a clean handover at contract signature and aligned expectations on “expand strategy”.
• With the Marketing team: align on priority segments and markets, and leverage concrete sales assets, customer references, and proof points produced by Marketing and operationalized through Sales Enablement.
• With the Operation and Product/Tech teams: ensure alignment on delivery feasibility, implementation timelines, and ramp-up assumptions embedded in sales commitments.
Success Metrics
• New contracts signed: ARR
• Deal quality: compliance with service packages and expected contribution margin
• Forecast accuracy
• Win rate and sales cycle duration
• Sales performance (New ARR / CAC)
Your profile
• Proven leader of B2B enterprise sales teams (public sector experience is a strong plus).
• Strong sales operator and people manager.
• Comfortable with senior client engagements and complex tenders.
• Highly reliable: plans, executes, delivers.
• Languages: fluent English; French required; German a strong plus.
Interview Process
Interview process — We begin with an initial call; next steps are adapted to the role and we keep the process as lean and transparent as possible.
More about Karos
Founded in 2014, Karos is the European leader of carpooling for daily commutes. By changing at scale the way people commute, Karos is a major actor of the ecological transition.
The company now operates public carpooling services for more than 100 local authorities and 600 employers, with over 1.5 million users and rollouts across 6 European countries.
Since 2024, Karos is a mission-driven company (French “Société à mission”).
Our mission, written into our bylaws:
✨ We are creating a new way of carpooling that is desirable and efficient, wherever it is useful, in order to improve everyday life and accelerate the ecological transition. As a trusted partner of key players in the territories, we are fighting to make carpooling a new standard for everyday transport. ✨
Our impact is greatest where alternatives are lacking: daily commutes by private car.
It is on these trips — mainly home–work, peri-urban and rural — that we are committed, working with public and private stakeholders to change habits at scale.
Today, we are 100 team members, mainly based in France and Germany, and we are rapidly expanding across Europe (🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇪🇸 🇨🇭 🇮🇹 🇳🇱).
