Portfolio Chief Financial Officer, Engineering Services

The mandate

An engineering services platform comprising three mid-market operating companies is expanding its contract portfolio beyond the scale at which project teams can manage funding independently. Mobilisation advances, procurement commitments and customer certification delays now interact across contracts, creating a platform liquidity exposure that cannot be understood from individual project margins. The Portfolio CFO will own the financial consequences of that connected operating model.

Employment is open-ended. The first eighteen months focus on a reliable project-to-platform cash architecture, fit-for-purpose funding arrangements and stronger investment decisions before contracts are committed. The appointment includes full finance leadership at a bounded operating platform, with accountability for accounting, treasury coordination and commercial financial challenge rather than a narrow financial advisory assignment.

The executive must distinguish contractual entitlement from cash that can realistically be collected. Retentions, disputed variations and milestone certification may preserve an accounting expectation while delaying funds needed for delivery. The finance team will therefore maintain separate views of recognised performance, evidenced customer obligations and usable liquidity, with project leaders accountable for the operating actions underlying each view.

Within delegated limits, the CFO controls finance staffing, cash prioritisation, banking operations and the financial conditions attached to new commercial proposals. Material borrowing, security creation, acquisitions and exceptional contract exposures require board approval; technical execution and legal entitlement remain with their respective specialists. A financing structure cannot be used to conceal an uneconomic project or bypass a commercial decision that needs escalation.

By the first anniversary, the platform should know its peak funded exposure under realistic contract scenarios and demonstrate why each accepted project can survive certification delay. The following six months deepen lender confidence, project review discipline and leadership succession. These initial targets define the build agenda, while continuing employment carries responsibility for maintaining the financial model as the contract portfolio changes.

What you will own

• Establish a project liquidity register linking mobilisation requirements, procurement commitments, certification evidence and retention release assumptions, with clear ownership of the operating action behind each cash forecast.
• Decide the financial conditions for contract approval within the delegated commercial framework, identifying bids whose funding burden or downside cash exposure requires explicit executive reconsideration before commitment.
• Develop lender and treasury proposals that match funding tenor to credible project cash conversion, documenting collateral, covenant and refinancing implications rather than choosing facilities on headline interest cost alone.
• Reconcile project margin claims to approved cost-to-complete evidence and cash forecasts, ensuring finance does not treat unagreed variations as dependable liquidity available for another contract's delivery.
• Govern a weekly platform cash prioritisation meeting, preserving documented payment decisions and escalation of unavoidable funding conflicts rather than permitting the loudest project sponsor to determine allocation.
• Build financial control standards for overseas project interfaces, addressing currency exposure, banking access and reporting ownership while obtaining specialist advice where local regulatory interpretation is required.
• Present a quarterly financial resilience paper that explains contract concentration, delayed collections and financing headroom, enabling the board to distinguish temporary timing pressure from a structurally weak project portfolio.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate prior CFO or equivalent executive finance accountability in engineering, construction services or another project-funded operating business. Explain a project where mobilisation, customer certification or retention materially changed the funding decision, and identify your personal role in reconciling commercial optimism with the cash evidence available to lenders and directors.
• Show depth in working capital, debt structure and financial modelling, including realistic cost-to-complete scenarios and covenant headroom. Relevant examples should explain the assumptions you rejected, the funding alternative selected and the operating conditions attached to it. A financing transaction alone does not establish the integrated project finance judgement required by this seat.
• Bring strong accounting and control leadership alongside commercial finance experience. Describe how you prevented disputed customer claims, unapproved variations or delayed certifications from distorting executive cash decisions, while preserving the correct accounting treatment and obtaining technical or legal specialist review where financial judgement could not establish the underlying contractual position.
• Establish credibility building finance teams and managing lenders, project directors and board stakeholders under pressure. Evidence should include a difficult payment or bid decision, transparent escalation of its consequences and follow-through on the agreed operating actions. Professional finance qualification or demonstrably equivalent technical standing must support the executive accountability assumed here.

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 11 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-188.