Confidential mandate
Chief Operating Officer — Interim, Telecom Hardware
Urgent / Replacement
A field-return spike and contract-manufacturer failure require a twelve-month interim COO to recover telecom hardware quality, secure supply and hand over profitable serial operations for customers.
The mandate
Outdoor radio units are failing in humid field conditions while the main contract manufacturer has missed delivery and containment deadlines. The COO resigned after a key telecom customer issued a cure notice covering quality and rollout availability.
The interim must start within two weeks for twelve months through field correction and a controlled manufacturing ramp. A permanent search starts after root cause and alternate capacity are accepted, leaving six weeks for transfer.
Handover requires field failure below one per cent for six months, cure-notice closure, two qualified manufacturing sources, ninety-five per cent delivery adherence, and the successor completing one customer assurance review unaided.
The COO may stop shipment, allocate constrained units and approve emergency supplier work below ₹1 crore. Recall scope, customer settlements above ₹3 crore and manufacturing capital above ₹5 crore need board approval; Engineering approves design change and Quality approves release.
Radio software features, spectrum policy and network-managed services are excluded. The assignment corrects and supplies the physical product already contracted.
Why this seat is open
Customer escalation combined two operating failures that had been managed separately: field reliability and supplier delivery. Leadership departure created immediate need for one end-to-end product operator. Temporary authority will last until correction and dual-source production are stable enough for permanent scale leadership.
What you will own
- Contain installed and finished units using serial, build, site and environmental risk evidence.
- Decide correction route across field retrofit, controlled replacement and manufacturing change.
- Establish causal linkage among sealing, thermal cycle, assembly variation and field conditions.
- Qualify alternate manufacturing through tooling, process, test and controlled pilot-lot evidence.
- Govern scarce-unit allocation against rollout criticality, network exposure and contract commitments.
- Close the customer cure notice with traceable field and delivery proof.
- Transfer dual-source control, residual fleet risk and customer assurance to the permanent COO.
Candidate qualifications
- More than twenty-two years in telecom, networking or industrial hardware operations with global customers.
- Recovered a field-reliability event involving contract manufacturing and installed-product correction.
- Detailed knowledge of electronics assembly, environmental protection, supplier quality and configuration genealogy.
- Experience establishing an alternate manufacturer while the original source remains operationally unstable.
- Ability to negotiate customer cure plans grounded in measurable fleet and supply outcomes.
- Respect for Engineering and Quality authority during urgent commercial recovery.
Non-negotiables
- Can join in Bengaluru within two weeks and travel to customer and manufacturing sites.
- No current relationship with the contract manufacturer or affected telecom customer.
- Prepared to stop shipment when containment or configuration proof is incomplete.
- Available exclusively through the twelve-month cure and successor transition.
- 49 words maximum. Confirm your earliest start and readiness for immediate customer and supplier travel.
- 49 words maximum. Which installed-hardware failure did you contain, and how was fleet risk segmented?
- 49 words maximum. What alternate manufacturing source did you qualify under a customer cure notice?
This mandate is confidential. The client is named only under a mutual NDA, and your own record is never listed, sold or shown to a company under your name until you release it for this specific mandate.