Chief Financial Officer, Semiconductor Design GCC — Tools and Compute Economics

The mandate

Semiconductor design capability depends on engineering tools, compute resources and prototype activity whose commercial commitments do not follow employee headcount neatly. An India design centre needs a CFO who can explain that financial structure and own the entity's complete finance operation. The priority is a credible view of capability cost, including committed subscriptions, variable consumption and duplicated resources. Engineering leaders judge which tools and capacity are technically necessary; finance must show what the entity is obliged to pay, how consumption evidence supports the plan and which choices remain financially reversible.

The appointment establishes open-ended employment with an initial eighteen-month work agenda covering commitment records, capability planning and dependable entity reporting. Twenty-four finance professionals support approximately 500 design and engineering employees. Bengaluru is the base, with planned reviews involving international design and commercial counterparts. The CFO owns accounting, budgets, operating finance and financial controls. Technical licence administration and design delivery remain outside the finance hierarchy, though their evidence is essential to understanding why expenditure changes or apparent available capacity cannot actually support a new programme.

Within delegation, the CFO approves operating finance priorities and supported financial judgements through qualified controller review. Material tool renewals, prototype commitments and changes to the capability investment envelope require authorised executive approval. Procurement and legal owners validate contract terms; engineering validates useful capacity and technical restrictions. Finance must distinguish a cheaper commercial package from one that creates an unusable resource or locks in costs beyond the expected programme need. Group allocation, tax and intellectual-property conclusions remain with their qualified owners.

The lasting remit includes financial reporting across applicable group and India frameworks, planning and governance of the entity's investment evidence. It excludes chip architecture, design verification and negotiation of technical licence permissions. Success is a finance function that can reconcile usage, obligations and accounts while explaining the choices executives still have. Directors need to see the cost of retaining necessary capability through changing workloads without disguising idle resources as productive output or treating a short-term utilisation decline as automatic justification to remove a technically essential facility.

What you will own

• Establish a tools, compute and prototype obligation register with procurement and engineering owners, distinguishing committed fees, variable use and renewal options so capability forecasts reflect actual commercial rights rather than assumed flexibility.
• Govern the financial view of resource consumption through verified operating evidence, reconciling it to invoices and accounts while preserving technical restrictions that make nominal capacity different from capacity usable by another programme.
• Recommend capability renewal and investment choices with downside workload scenarios, explaining the costs of retention, duplication and exit without treating short-term utilisation as sufficient evidence to remove a necessary engineering resource.
• Lead entity close and group reporting through qualified reviews, documenting material expenditure and allocation judgements so management analytics remain reconcilable to accounts under the relevant financial frameworks.
• Decide approved operating finance priorities and team deployment, escalating additional investment or altered commitments through the proper governance route before they become embedded in supplier or programme expectations.
• Challenge cost assumptions in centre expansion plans with engineering, procurement and legal specialists, identifying terms or dependencies that require authoritative review while leaving design delivery and licence permission decisions with those owners.
• Develop a finance leadership team capable of sustaining capability economics and reliable reporting, giving executives clear alternatives instead of relying on a single specialist's private interpretation of complex tool and usage records.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate twenty-two to twenty-eight years in finance with senior responsibility in technology, semiconductor-related operations, R&D or a relevant internationally connected engineering entity. Deputy-CFO or equivalent leadership can establish readiness when it includes owned entity-level decisions and controls. Show a capability-cost or committed-resource choice you changed using contract and operating evidence, identifying your financial judgement separately from technical assessment of the resource.
• Bring recognised accounting or management-accounting preparation and substantial applied reporting competence across the frameworks relevant to India and group accounts. Explain a cost or allocation view that required reconciliation to statutory records, and how you obtained qualified conclusions for complex treatment. The role needs reliable finance leadership and specialist consultation, with no requirement to hold a chip-design credential or sign an external audit opinion.
• Have worked with engineering, procurement and technology owners on commercial commitments whose useful capacity differed from their headline price or volume. Describe how restrictions, renewal rights or consumption evidence affected your recommendation. You must challenge economic assumptions intelligently while accepting that a resource can be technically indispensable despite low immediate utilisation; finance should expose the trade-off, not make an unsupported engineering decision.
• Have led finance professionals through planning, close and operational reviews, developing practical ownership of difficult source information. Evidence should include a renewal or investment decision supported by accountable alternatives and a process that remained understandable to others. The appointment requires Bengaluru leadership engagement, confidentiality around design activity and a disciplined distinction among finance authority, engineering judgement and specialist legal or tax responsibilities.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 10 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-251.