EVP – Supply Chain — AI Safety Programme

The mandate

An AI safety programme is moving from research arrangements into products that require dependable capacity, equipment, services and evidence. Its most important inputs remain concentrated among a small number of suppliers, and lead times vary enough to threaten customer commitments. Research teams could previously work around scarcity through bespoke choices; supported products need repeatable specifications, approved alternatives and recovery plans. The EVP – Supply Chain will build that system without constraining strategically valuable experimentation.

The operating perimeter represents approximately US$850 million in AI product and services revenue and around 500 employees and material partners across the USA, New York and the wider region. Supply exposure includes compute and infrastructure capacity, specialist hardware, data and evaluation services, software dependencies, professional services and logistics. Several inputs carry technical, security or safety implications that price-based procurement alone cannot govern.

The first-year outcomes are supply assurance, inventory productivity and credible dual-source readiness. The organisation must know which dependencies are truly critical, what failure would affect, how long recovery would take and what alternative is technically qualified. Resilience investment should be proportionate to customer and safety consequence, while inventory and capacity commitments require transparent economic ownership.

Why this seat is open

This is a newly created urgent role because distributed sourcing ownership cannot support the research-to-product transition. Interim forums protect immediate continuity but do not provide one permanent executive for the choices ahead. The organisation expects to convert a qualified field into an offer within six to eight weeks. This onsite New York appointment supports international relocation and reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive committee sponsor.

What you will own

You will establish an authoritative map of tier-one and underlying dependencies. Contractual supplier names are insufficient: the board needs visibility into manufacturing, cloud, data, specialist labour and geographic concentration beneath them. Each critical dependency should have a business owner, failure scenario, recovery strategy and evidence-based risk rating. Safety and technical teams must participate in qualification.

Category strategies will connect demand, specification, inventory, capacity, commercial leverage and resilience. You will decide when volume should be committed, where flexibility justifies premium cost and which requirements create unnecessary single-source dependence. Total economics must include integration, validation, switching, delay and stranded capacity, not simply unit price.

Dual sourcing should be real rather than contractual. Alternatives must pass technical, security, safety and operational acceptance on representative workloads. You will sponsor qualification plans, define minimum viable allocation and make the cost of readiness visible. Where a second source is infeasible, the board needs explicit mitigation and risk acceptance.

The 500-person employee and partner perimeter requires stronger end-to-end ownership. Procurement, planning, engineering, operations and finance should use one demand and constraint view. Supplier performance will include quality, delivery, control evidence and recovery. Leadership assessment and succession must reduce reliance on a few relationship holders.

The first 12 months

In the first 90 days, identify critical dependencies through product and customer journeys, not spend rank alone. Validate lead times, capacity commitments, inventory, contract rights and alternative qualification. Meet the suppliers and internal owners associated with the largest exposures, assess the leadership team and agree a board scorecard and immediate containment actions.

Between months four and nine, renegotiate or redesign the most consequential dependencies, qualify priority alternatives and establish integrated demand and supply reviews. Improve inventory or capacity productivity without weakening resilience. Fill leadership gaps and demonstrate one dual-source or recovery intervention that measurably changes continuity risk for a supported product.

By month twelve, supply assurance and alternative readiness should be supported by evidence across the material portfolio. The next capacity and inventory plan must reconcile product demand, customer obligations, supplier lead time and cash. Present a three-year resilience case with downside actions for demand shocks, supplier failure and technology change.

What the board will measure

The approved first-year supply case should remain within 10% of cost and outcome assumptions, with emerging variance raised early. Three quarterly forecasts must reconcile demand, commitments, inventory, cash and workforce. A defined concentration or lead-time constraint should improve quantitatively from a verified baseline.

Priority supplier and continuity risks must close by governance dates with evidence that mitigations operate. Critical-talent retention should be at least 90%, while ready-now succession should cover 70% of direct reports. Severe supply escalations cannot remain without a decision beyond 30 days, and material disruption must reach the executive forum promptly.

The person

You are an EVP Supply Chain, Chief Procurement Officer or Operations Leader with 18–22 years in AI, enterprise software, data infrastructure, cloud, analytics, applied research or a comparable technology supply environment. You have owned at least US$1.1 billion of P&L, spend, budget or accountable portfolio and led no fewer than 500 people.

Your record includes reducing concentrated supply exposure while a technical product moved into scaled operation. You can quantify lead-time, inventory, continuity and economic effects and explain how alternatives were qualified. The board will test a case where the cheapest route was not the best risk-adjusted decision. References must verify your direct role and sustained result.

Compensation and terms

Compensation for this supply-chain appointment is expected at US$320,000–420,000 base plus annual incentive, with final positioning reflecting remit and current mix. Any longer-term element follows normal vesting and performance provisions. Notice up to six months can be accommodated. The EVP will engage regularly with the chair, executive committee and principal capital sponsors.

Confidentiality

The client name, precise footprint, supplier exposures and transaction history sit outside this brief. Qualified candidates will receive them under a mutual undertaking; composite facts must not be circulated or reverse-engineered.