Advisory Director — Technology Value (Technology)

Counsel on the oldest argument in engineering

Every technology business argues about where its engineers should spend their time. Existing customers and platforms need maintenance, security and steady improvement; new demand needs people who could otherwise be doing exactly that. Neither side is wrong, and the argument never ends on its own. The Advisory Director is appointed to help the Technology Committee Chair and the committee settle it with evidence rather than volume, over 24 months.

Counsel that shapes the committee's calls

The seat is advisory. Decisions remain with the committee and with management; your contribution is the quality of the counsel that shapes them. You will help the committee agree how technology decisions are divided between the centre and local leadership, and advise on the evidence an engineering headcount or platform spending request should carry across the four markets. You will give a view on which inherited engineering commitments still deserve their people. You will challenge proposals that leave a cost or a risk with nobody, and value cases that take usage for granted, overlook what else must be built first, or skip the downside. You will also advise on how the leadership is structured and how disputes rise, and help the committee and operating leaders resolve conflicts while money is still uncommitted.

Two years of sharper allocation

Over the first ninety days, the committee should agree, on your advice, the criteria for dividing engineering capacity between existing and new demand: what each must show to earn people, and what signals would shift the balance. By around month nine allocation decisions should be reviewed with the committee against those criteria, and your challenge recorded where a case lacks adoption evidence. By month 24 the criteria should have been tested over several cycles, the committee confident in the evidence it receives, and the advisory role able to step back because the discipline holds without it.

An adviser who has made the trade-off themselves

You can tell a necessary local judgement from variation protected by habit. Your experience was earned in technology or digital platforms businesses of real scale: revenue of $825 million or more, 1,500 or more people and four or more countries. The committee weighs culture reset, digital transformation and integration, each of which tests whether engineering priorities can change without losing the people who deliver them. Risk judgement at level 4 is the leading capability; at level 3 the committee expects data and AI governance, product delivery and the ability to design architecture that scales. You have made a decision you could reverse on partial evidence, then firmed it up as the picture cleared, and you build up others so that your advice outlives your tenure. An adviser who wants to stay popular with both sides of the capacity argument will not help the committee settle it.

Committee chair, board chair, executives, board

Selection starts in week one with a first conversation, in confidence and by video, with the Technology Committee Chair. In week three you spend time with the Board Chair, testing how your counsel would land with the wider board. Week five brings an in-person meeting with executives from the company's other functions, probing how engineering trade-offs look from their side, and week seven is a discussion with the directors. We reply to each stage in writing within 2 working days.