
Prelude · Paris
About Prelude Prelude is redefining how companies authenticate and onboard users - turning what's traditionally a cost center into a growth lever. Our flagshi...
About Prelude
Prelude is redefining how companies authenticate and onboard users - turning what's traditionally a cost center into a growth
lever.
Our flagship product lets businesses send OTP codes with the best price-to-conversion ratio on the market, dynamically selecting
the most effective channel in real time (optimized SMS, WhatsApp, and more) while actively blocking spam and fraud that legacy
providers miss.
Founded in 2022 by former Zenly team members who lived the pain of broken SMS authentication firsthand, we're already serving
fast-growing companies across Europe and are expanding into the US.
But authentication is only the starting point - we're building the platform for trust at scale, with an ambitious roadmap of
market-defining products ahead.
Why join us
Today, we're a team of 60 and growing, based in Paris, building products that power secure and high-performance user onboarding
for companies across the world. We believe small, highly skilled teams outperform large, fragmented organizations, and we are
intentional about staying focused on impact, quality, and speed.
We operate with a flat org structure and value in-person collaboration, which helps ideas move faster, decisions stay grounded,
and teams take full ownership of what they build.
Our values
We care deeply about our customers, our teammates, and the quality and reliability of what we ship.
We move fast, test in the real world, and iterate quickly rather than over-optimizing in theory.
We take responsibility end to end, from identifying problems to delivering outcomes and learning from results.
This is more than a typical support role. You’ll be one of the first senior support hires at Prelude, with real ownership over how
the function takes shape as we grow.
When a developer at Voodoo is debugging a webhook signature, when X sees unexpected 429s in production, when Tipalti walks through
a retry policy with us, or when Suno is troubleshooting a delivery rate dip in our API logs, you’re the person on the other end.
You set the tone for how Prelude shows up: technically sharp, calm under pressure, and genuinely useful when something is on fire.
You won’t inherit a finished playbook. You’ll help shape it, alongside a team that’s excited to learn from you as much as it wants
to support your growth here.
API logs, asking thoughtful questions about rate limits and retry behavior. You’ll triage, investigate, and resolve issues,
working closely with Engineering whenever a fix or deeper dive is needed.
confident first weeks in production.
anomalies, untapped features, and integration patterns worth refining, and reach out before customers have to ask.
context you carry, the sharper the help you offer, and the more useful the signal you can route back to Product.
points there, and send back answers that include the exact request, the response, and a clear explanation of what happened, not
just “we’re looking into it.”
triage, customer-facing status communication. A lot of this is still being defined, and your judgment on what it should look
like is welcome from day one.
log-analysis loops, response drafting, or custom Claude or GPT integrations against internal tools, and the leverage they
created for your team (hours saved per week, tickets pre-classified, faster resolution times).
to be filed again: a doc fix, an SDK improvement, a clearer error message, a small product change.
next morning. Help drive momentum when something is stuck. We rely on senior teammates to move things forward when no single
team owns the problem.
6+ years supporting developers at a B2B SaaS company, somewhere like Stripe, Twilio, Vercel, Segment, Auth0/Okta, Plaid,
Cloudflare, Datadog, Linear, Sentry, PostHog, Resend, Clerk, WorkOS, Supabase, Pinecone, Algolia, LaunchDarkly, or Speakeasy. Your
customers have been developers (people building products on top of an API) rather than business users on a dashboard.
You’re comfortable in code. You have a software engineer background and can write at least one of Python, JS/TS, or Go fluently
enough to follow a stack trace, scan an SDK file, and point a customer toward the line that matters. You use curl and Postman
without thinking about it, write SQL when you need to, and feel at home in tools like Datadog or Grafana.
You use AI deliberately as part of your craft. We’d love to hear about workflows you’ve shipped in the last six months (internal
tools, triage layers, log-analysis loops, custom Claude/GPT setups) and the measurable impact they’ve had. Less interested in
whether you’ve experimented; more interested in what you’ve put into production.
You’ve shaped how a team operates. Maybe you introduced a runbook, started the on-call rotation, stood up an AI triage layer, or
partnered with engineering to retire a recurring class of tickets. We pay attention to what you’ve built and changed, not just how
long you’ve been doing the work.
You bring momentum. You’re patient with people and impatient with stuck systems, comfortable pushing for resolution when customers
are waiting, without losing your sense of humor.
Excellent written English. You’ll be writing to engineers at some of the world’s most demanding companies. French or other
European languages are a bonus, not a requirement.
You’ve been one of the first 1–5 hires in a support function before, or you’ve watched a company scale from under 50 to over 200
and have a feel for what “good” looks like at each stage.
You’ve helped run or contribute to a developer community (Discord, Slack Connect, a forum) and enjoy turning a confused integrator
into a power user.
You’ve built small internal tools yourself: a Retool app, a Slack bot, a quick script to pull a customer’s recent traffic before
you reply. You’d rather build than wait.
If you’ve spent the last few years deep in developer-facing support, you reach for AI to amplify your work rather than admire it
from a distance, and you’re excited about being the person who helps define what great support looks like at a fast-growing
company, we’d love to talk.
an incident you helped run. We enjoy going deep.
ABOUT DUST Work is being rewritten, and the people holding the pen are the ones who actually run it. With enterprise-grade governance, flexible model choice, and a collaborative interface for humans and agents to work together, Dust empowers AI Operators at the world’s fastest-moving companies to rewire how work gets done. With 70%+ weekly active users, people stick with Dust as much as they do with Slack and Notion. We don't get piloted and shelved. We land once, and spread. We're at an exciting stage of our journey, and growing fast. We're serving great customers like Datadog, 1Password, Cursor, Clay, Vanta and Persona, and aim to x5 our growth by the end of 2026. Dust is backed by Sequoia with a determined team of optimists (coming from Stripe, OpenAI, and Stanford) who like to focus on users, ship fast, and don't take themselves too seriously while doing so. The Generalist named us among the Future 50. THE ROLE Support at Dust is not a cost center. It is one of the most important product surfaces we own. As a Senior AI Support Engineer, you will help define what world-class support looks like in an AI-native company. You will not just resolve tickets. You will own the systems, agents, workflows, and feedback loops that make support better, faster, and more scalable over time. This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who has already operated close to support strategy, technical escalation, user experience, and automation. You should be excited by the idea of taking recurring customer pain and turning it into durable systems: better agents, better documentation, better internal tooling, sharper product feedback, and fewer repeat issues. The best person for this role is not a traditional support leader who wants to manage a queue from a distance. It is someone with strong technical instincts, a deep user mindset, and a track record of building support systems that change how a team operates. You might be a great fit if you have built an AI-powered support function, owned support tooling at scale, worked deeply with LLMs or automation, or carried a support strategy from problem discovery through implementation and measurement. WHAT YOU WILL OWN BUILDING THE AI SYSTEMS THAT MAKE SUPPORT SCALE You will design, build, and continuously improve the AI-powered systems that help Dust support customers with speed and quality. This includes agents for ticket classification, auto-acknowledgement, response drafting, internal routing, proactive incident detection, knowledge retrieval, and escalation support. You will identify categories of recurring issues and engineer them out of the support queue. Sometimes that means building a better Dust agent. Sometimes it means improving documentation, creating an internal tool, tightening a workflow, writing a script, or escalating product feedback upstream with enough context for engineering to act. You will be expected to measure whether the systems you build actually improve the user experience. Seniority here means not just shipping tooling, but knowing what good looks like, instrumenting it, and iterating until the impact is visible. RUNNING COMPLEX SUPPORT WHEN THE SYSTEMS FALL SHORT You will still be close to the work. You will investigate complex customer issues across logs, code, internal tooling, product behavior, and agent outputs. You will provide clear, accurate answers to customers, including when the underlying issue is ambiguous or technically complex. You will handle escalated cases with precision and judgment, communicating clearly with both technical and non-technical users. You should be comfortable translating between customer language, product behavior, engineering detail, and business impact. When AI-generated responses are incomplete, inconsistent, or wrong, you will debug the system behind them. You will improve prompts, knowledge sources, workflows, routing, tooling, and escalation paths so that the same failure mode does not repeat. SHAPING THE SUPPORT STRATEGY You will help define how Dust should run support as we scale. That means thinking beyond the queue and owning the full loop: what customers experience, what support sees, what agents can handle, what engineering needs to fix, and what product should learn. You will translate repeated customer pain into high-quality product signal. You will build strong working relationships with engineers and product teams so escalations are high-context, actionable, and efficient. You will also help raise the bar for how the support function operates: what we measure, how we prioritize, how we review quality, how we onboard junior team members, and how we decide what should be automated versus handled by a human. WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR Every candidate and employee’s success at Dust is measured against the same three dimensions: Aptitude, Attitude, and Agency. APTITUDE You have strong technical depth. You are comfortable with APIs, web applications, logs, scripts, and internal tools. You can navigate a codebase, reason through product behavior, and troubleshoot systems without being stopped by a stack trace. You have genuine AI fluency at builder level. You have built agents, automations, workflows, or internal tools using AI systems such as Dust, Cursor, Claude Code, n8n, GPT-4, Claude, Mistral, Gemini, or similar platforms. You are not just good at prompting. You understand how to turn AI into operational leverage. You have experience operating at the strategy layer of support, not only at the ticket layer. You have owned or helped shape support systems, support tooling, escalation workflows, deflection strategy, knowledge management, or AI support operations. You can balance technical accuracy with user experience. You care about whether the customer understood the answer, whether the product pain was addressed, and whether the issue will happen again. You are able to communicate bidirectionally: clearly enough for customers, technically enough for engineers, and strategically enough for leadership. ATTITUDE You combine resilience with empathy. This is a front-line role, and customer frustration is often direct and unfiltered. You do not take it personally, but you do take it seriously. You are proactive rather than reactive. You do not wait for a perfect problem statement from the customer. You investigate, infer, clarify, and anticipate what they may need next. You have strong prioritization judgment. You know what needs an immediate human response, what can be automated, what should be escalated, and what should become product feedback. You are comfortable setting boundaries. You do not say yes to everything, and you can explain tradeoffs clearly in a way that builds trust rather than eroding it. You care about the craft of support. You see support as a product experience, not a back-office function. AGENCY You turn patterns into systems. When you see the same issue twice, you start asking whether it should exist at all. You go deep before escalating. You investigate as far as you reasonably can, so that when you involve engineering or product, they receive a clear problem statement, relevant evidence, and a useful recommendation. You build without waiting for permission. If you see a gap in the support system, you are excited to prototype, test, and ship a better version. You continuously improve your own workflows. You treat your time, your tools, and your operating system as things worth debugging. You extract product opportunities from customer interactions. You do not let support signal disappear into a solved ticket. You close the loop. WHAT STRONG CANDIDATES MAY HAVE DONE BEFORE You may have: * Built or led an AI-powered support function * Designed support agents, internal copilots, escalation workflows, or deflection systems * Owned technical support tooling, support operations, or automation at a fast-growing software company * Worked as a senior support engineer, technical support engineer, developer support engineer, support ops engineer, solutions engineer, or implementation engineer * Built a support product, internal platform, AI startup, or automation-heavy support system * Operated in a high-volume environment where quality, speed, and judgment all mattered We care more about the depth and relevance of your experience than the exact number of years. That said, we expect this role to be a fit for someone who has already spent several years close to technical support, support engineering, AI tooling, or support systems ownership. WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT This is not a traditional customer support role focused only on ticket resolution. It is not a people-management role where you are far away from the technical work. It is not a pure operations role where you optimize process without building. It is not a role for someone who is curious about AI but has not yet built with it. The person we are looking for should be excited to own the messy middle between customers, AI agents, internal tooling, engineering, and product. COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS * Competitive compensation * Significant equity package in a Sequoia-backed startup * Substantial relocation support, up to 10k€, including help finding an apartment in Paris and support with the visa process * Health insurance for you and your dependents * New MacBook Pro or Linux machine, monitor, keyboard, and equipment * Beautiful office in the heart of Paris * Opportunity to travel to the US multiple times a year * Regular team events and offsites We can go higher for exceptional profiles. LOCATION We're prioritizing building our team with an in-person culture at our offices in Paris, San Francisco, and New York because we value the magic that happens when talented people work closely together. We have an office-first culture. Some of the best things about building at Dust are the energy, the fast decisions, and the unexpected conversations that unlock a hard problem, which happen because we are in the same room. Being together is not a formality, it is how we do our best work, and it is something we actively protect. That said, we hire people with strong judgement and we extend that trust to how they manage their time. When working from home makes more sense for what you need to get done that day, we trust you to make that call. WHY DUST The models are powerful enough. What's missing is the product layer where AI meets how companies actually work. That's what we're building: the infrastructure that lets any team turn scattered knowledge and tools into coordinated execution with agents they build, own, and run themselves. We use Dust ourselves every day. We get to shape how humans and agents collaborate while solving our own problems with the product we ship. That loop is rare, and it's why we move fast. If you're excited about defining a new category and want to join a determined team of optimists who focus on users, ship fast, and don't take themselves too seriously, we'd love to talk. Even if you don't check every box in our requirements, we encourage you to apply. We value diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and we're more interested in your potential and passion than a perfect match to our checklist. Learn how we think and work. * Our product constitution, a story about our mission * Agents at work - Latent Space, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024 * LLMs reasoning and agentic capabilities over time - dotAI, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024
VOS MISSIONS Chez Doctolib, l’équipe CC (Customer Care) & Sales Operations est responsable d’améliorer l’efficacité et l’impact de nos équipes Sales, Account Managers et Support, tout en entretenant un haut niveau de motivation, d’engagement et de passion. Nous sommes une équipe de 25 personnes très motivées, en charge de l’organisation, de la stratégie, de la data, des processus, des outils et du coaching de nos 600+ Sales, Consultant·e·s et Account Managers. L’équipe CC & Sales Ops est rattachée au Sales Ops Director, lui-même sous la direction de la VP Growth France. Au sein de cette équipe, l’équipe Analytics & Strategy (4 membres à temps plein et 2 stagiaires) pilote tous les sujets liés à l’analyse et l’exploration de données, au suivi, à la modélisation et au forecasting de la performance pour générer des insights actionnables, améliorer les processus et suivre de près la performance versus notre budget prévisionnel. En tant que Senior Customer Operations Analyst, vous serez le/la référent·e analytique de nos opérations, avec un focus spécifique sur nos équipes Support, en travaillant en étroite collaboration avec Product Marketing, Data, Finance et le leadership France. Vous aurez un impact clé pour améliorer la performance des équipes, augmenter les revenus, maîtriser les dépenses et accroître la satisfaction. Ce rôle est unique car il combine analyse de données, recommandations stratégiques, PMO et modélisation, tout en vous donnant une exposition directe au top management d’une des principales scale-ups tech européennes. Vos responsabilités incluent mais ne sont pas limitées à : 1. Forecast & Business Planning * Travailler main dans la main avec Finance et le CC Performance Director pour construire, deux fois par an, des prévisions fiables de staffing et de performance à court, moyen et long terme. 2. Performance Monitoring * Développer et mettre en place des modèles de prévision afin d’améliorer la précision et la fiabilité de notre suivi de performance. * Piloter la performance CC en suivant de près les KPIs clés (Contact Ratio, Quality of Service…) au quotidien, chaque semaine et chaque mois. * Construire et maintenir des dashboards de performance CC pour les équipes opérationnelles et le leadership France. * Préparer les revues business mensuelles partagées avec le senior leadership (y compris les membres du Comex). 2. Analytics & Insights * Travailler avec les Data Product Managers et les Analytics Engineers pour garantir la qualité des données, des jeux de données fiables et des définitions de KPIs robustes pour les équipes Support. * Réaliser des analyses approfondies des métriques de performance Customer Care afin d’identifier tendances, insights et axes d’amélioration. * Transformer des jeux de données complexes en insights actionnables pour éclairer les décisions stratégiques et présenter des recommandations au senior leadership. 3. Gestion de projet / Stratégie * Collaborer avec les autres équipes Ops pour définir et déployer des stratégies et plans Support alignés sur les objectifs business de Doctolib. * Accompagner le déploiement de projets stratégiques (projets satisfaction, gestion des prestataires externes, etc.). LES QUALITÉS ATTENDUES POUR CE POSTE Avant de poursuivre votre lecture, si vous n'avez pas le profil exact décrit ci-dessous, mais que vous pensez que cette description de poste correspond à vos compétences et à vos aspirations, nous vous encourageons tout de même à postuler. Vous pourrez être le prochain membre de notre équipe si : * Vous êtes à l’aise en français et en anglais. * Vous avez au moins 3 ans d’expérience en analytique (ops/business/stratégie, en entreprise ou en conseil). * Vous avez de solides compétences analytiques et en résolution de problèmes. Vous aimez à la fois imaginer de nouvelles solutions et entrer dans le détail de l’exécution et des opérations. * Vous manipulez des données au quotidien avec vos outils favoris (Excel, Google Sheets…) et maîtrisez des outils de data visualization comme Tableau, Power BI, Metabase ou équivalents. * Vous avez un fort sens business et de la communication : vous savez traduire des besoins métiers en exigences analytiques et communiquer clairement des insights à des parties prenantes non techniques. Ce qui vous rendra successful dans ce rôle : * Drive & autonomie : vous portez vos projets avec un état d’esprit entrepreneurial. * Curiosité & learning agility : vous posez des questions, vous vous formez en autonomie sur de nouveaux outils et vous améliorez en continu. * Capacité à créer des relations : vous créez proactivement des liens avec des parties prenantes à travers l’organisation et vous générez de la confiance auprès de vos pairs. Ce serait un vrai plus si : * Vous êtes à l’aise avec SQL (gros plus, mais nous valorisons avant tout l’envie d’apprendre). * Vous avez de l’expérience avec des KPI opérationnels (sales ops, customer care, supply chain, etc.). * Vous savez utiliser des CRM tels que Salesforce. NOTRE OFFRE * Une mutuelle avantageuse prise en charge à 100 % par Doctolib pour les employés et leurs enfants * 25 jours de congés payés et jusqu'à 14 jours de RTT par an (hors équipes Customer Care) * Un programme de santé mentale et de coaching personnalisé gratuit avec notre partenaire Moka.care * 10 jours par an de télétravail à l’étranger possible * Adhésion au plan de partage de la valeur de Doctolib, appelé DoctoGrowth * Des tickets restaurant d'une valeur de 8,50 € par jour, dont 4,50 € pris en charge par Doctolib * Un programme d'intégration complet de 3 mois incluant la Doctolib Academy et diverses formations (langues, soft skills, compétences techniques) * Une subvention du comité d'entreprise pour le remboursement partiel d'adhésions à des activités sportives ou de loisirs * Un remboursement à 50 % de l'abonnement aux transports en commun * Un mois de congé supplémentaire au congé parental légal grâce au programme "Parent Care" * Pour les salariés en situation de handicap ou proches aidants, un package comprenant une adaptation du télétravail, des jours d'absence autorisée payés pour les rendez-vous médicaux et un soutien psychologique renforcé * Aide au déménagement en cas de mobilité internationale LE PROCESSUS DE RECRUTEMENT * 30’ avec la Talent Partner * 60’ avec le Hiring Manager et un·e autre membre de l’équipe * 60’ de présentation d’une étude de cas et échange avec le Hiring Manager et un·e autre manager * 30’ d’échange final avec le CC & Sales Ops Director * Une prise de référence à minima DÉTAILS DU POSTE * CDI * Temps Plein * Lieu de Travail : Levallois * Prise de poste : dès que possible * Rémunération : fixe et variable sur objectifs (à définir selon profil) * Ce poste est éligible au télétravail partiel (2 jours/ semaine) Chez Doctolib, nous sommes convaincus que nous devons améliorer la santé pour tout le monde. Cela se reflète dans notre processus de recrutement. Nous évaluons les candidatures uniquement sur la base des qualifications et de la motivation, sans aucune forme de discrimination. Plus les idées sont diverses, plus notre produit améliorera véritablement la santé pour tout le monde. Vous pouvez postuler chez Doctolib, quel que soit votre genre, religion, âge, orientation sexuelle, origine ethnique ou handicap. Afin de garantir l'égalité des chances, nous vous invitons à exclure les informations personnelles (par exemple : photos, âgé) de vos candidatures. Si vous avez besoin d'aménagements particuliers, merci de nous en informer pour que nous puissions adapter le processus de recrutement. Rejoignez-nous pour construire la santé dont nous rêvons tous ! Toutes les informations fournies sont traitées par Doctolib pour la gestion des candidatures. Pour plus de détails sur le traitement des données, cliquez ici. Veuillez contacter hr.dataprivacy(at)doctolib.com pour toute question ou pour exercer vos droits.
CSQ427R154 As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) you will work with customers to build and productionize solutions to their data & AI challenges using the Databricks platform. You will own the architecture, lead design decisions, and implement end-to-end systems spanning data engineering, AI, and application development. We work cross-functionally to shape long-term strategic priorities and initiatives alongside engineering, product, and developer relations. FDEs deliver with customer empathy, integrating with client systems, training, and other technical needs to help customers get most value out of their data. This is a hands-on, customer-facing role for builders who thrive at the intersection of technology and business impact. The ideal candidate combines engineering expertise with adaptability, curiosity, and a passion for working with customers and teammates to solve complex problems that drive measurable outcomes. FDEs are billable and know how to complete projects according to specification with exceptional customer empathy. The impact you will have: * Production Solution Delivery: Lead impactful customer technical projects by delivering production-grade systems, designing and building reference architectures, custom applications and data ingestion and ML/AI model integration * Transformational Impact: Guide strategic customers as they implement transformational big data projects including end-to-end design, build and deployment of industry-leading big data and AI applications. Work with engagement managers to scope technical delivery work with input from the customer * Empower Customers: Guide customers on architecture and design; bootstrap or implement customer projects which leads to a customers' successful understanding, evaluation and adoption of Databricks. * Own the Architecture: Lead architecture and design decisions, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, and aligned with both customer needs and Databricks best practices. * Work with the Databricks technical team, Project Manager, Architect and Customer team to ensure the technical components of the engagement are delivered to meet customer's needs. * Work with Engineering and Databricks Customer Support to provide product and implementation feedback and to guide rapid resolution for engagement specific product and support issues. * Customer Immersion: Embed with customer teams, engaging with stakeholders from technical ICs to executives to deeply understand challenges and deliver impact. * Reusable Assets & Scale: Contribute accelerators, frameworks, and best practices that scale impact across accounts and influence the Databricks product roadmap. What we look for: * Extensive experience in data engineering, data platforms & analytics, or software engineering * Comfortable writing code in either Python, Scala, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern frameworks * Working knowledge of two or more common Cloud ecosystems (AWS, Azure, GCP) with expertise in at least one * Deep experience with distributed computing with Apache Spark™ and knowledge of Spark runtime internals * Familiarity with CI/CD for production deployments * Working knowledge of MLOps, ML/AI models and AI APIs * Design and deployment of performant production end-to-end data architectures and applications that combine data pipelines, ML/AI models, and user-facing interfaces. * Experience with technical project delivery - managing scope, timelines and measurable outcomes, translating complex concepts into actionable solutions. * Documentation and white-boarding skills. * Experience working with enterprise clients and managing conflicts across a broad stakeholder range * Build skills in technical areas, and demonstrate curiosity, adaptability, and eagerness to explore new technologies which support the deployment and integration of Databricks-based solutions to complete customer projects. * Travel to customers 20% of the time * Databricks Certification About Databricks Databricks is the data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide — including Comcast, Condé Nast, Grammarly, and over 50% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to unify and democratize data, analytics and AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow. To learn more, follow Databricks on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Benefits At Databricks, we strive to provide comprehensive benefits and perks that meet the needs of all of our employees. For specific details on the benefits offered in your region click here. Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion At Databricks, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can excel. We take great care to ensure that our hiring practices are inclusive and meet equal employment opportunity standards. Individuals looking for employment at Databricks are considered without regard to age, color, disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other protected characteristics. Compliance If access to export-controlled technology or source code is required for performance of job duties, it is within Employer's discretion whether to apply for a U.S. government license for such positions, and Employer may decline to proceed with an applicant on this basis alone.