Senior Director India Tax — Financial-Services Entity and Transaction Governance

The mandate

Five financial-services operating entities need a common Indian tax voice without losing the distinctions in their activities, contracts and obligations. A new senior director will hold that national specialist perimeter and join the financial decisions early enough to shape their treatment. Employment is open-ended. The first eighteen months will establish entity-level positions, transaction concurrence and a compliance-evidence framework, followed by continuing accountability as new products, service arrangements and intra-group transactions change the facts on which tax decisions depend.

The starting inventory is not just a list of returns. You will connect entity business models to direct-tax positions, indirect-tax treatment, withholding obligations and intercompany evidence, identifying decisions whose owners currently sit between departments. Routine service charges and product-related payments need a clear review route; novel transactions need enough lead time for specialist advice. The tax function should distinguish a settled technical position from an operating practice that has never been tested, while giving finance leaders a concise view of exposure and the next required decision.

Seventeen specialists work through direct-tax, transaction-tax and compliance leads. You may concur on ordinary treatments within the regional executive's policy and set national work priorities. Material settlement positions, new entity models and significant tax-policy departures require regional approval with the CFO and relevant counsel. Finance owns the books, legal owns professional interpretation and business heads own product execution. Your authority includes returning proposals without adequate facts; it does not include changing a commercial transaction unilaterally or allowing expected savings to substitute for a defensible technical and evidential basis.

An effective opening programme leaves the group able to reconcile its major tax positions to actual entity records and identify who maintains the supporting evidence. A sampled transaction should travel from commercial facts to concurrence, booking and filing without unexplained changes in its description. Mumbai is the base, with regular Bengaluru and adviser engagement. The ongoing role develops specialists, reviews emerging exposure and improves audit readiness. Performance is assessed through consistent judgement and reliable execution, not through a blanket expectation that the national tax charge must decrease each year.

What you will own

• Establish the entity tax-position inventory by linking actual activities, contractual flows and booked transactions, identifying where inherited treatment lacks the current evidence needed for defensible national oversight.
• Decide routine transaction concurrence within approved policy, requiring business facts and specialist escalation before novel arrangements or material exceptions enter finance execution or become recurring operating practice.
• Set an integrated compliance-evidence calendar that assigns source ownership across tax and finance, preventing completed filing dates from concealing unresolved reconciliation or missing documentation behind material positions.
• Challenge intercompany service and payment descriptions against contracts and operating conduct, resolving inconsistent facts before direct-tax, indirect-tax and withholding reviews reach contradictory conclusions about the same arrangement.
• Build national exposure reviews for the CFO and regional executive, distinguishing accepted positions, pending interpretation and operating weakness so each issue has a clear next decision rather than a generic risk label.
• Develop direct and transaction-tax leads through technical case reviews and succession planning, strengthening delegated judgement while retaining appropriate escalation of novel policy, material controversy or professional legal questions.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring twenty-two to twenty-eight years of tax experience with substantial Indian direct-tax, transaction-tax and compliance responsibility in financial services or technology-enabled operations. Describe a cross-entity tax decision you personally owned where departments used inconsistent facts. Explain how you reconciled the evidence and changed the concurrence or filing process, rather than only obtaining an external opinion on the preferred interpretation.
• Demonstrate rigorous professional tax and accounting competence, whether through recognised qualification or sustained senior specialist practice. You must connect tax positions to entity records, understand the interaction of withholding and indirect-tax review and recognise when a question requires counsel or another specialist. Experience should include judgement under scrutiny, not just technical familiarity detached from implementation and financial reconciliation.
• Show practical leadership with CFOs, controllers and business owners when a new arrangement was commercially urgent but inadequately documented. Explain the information you required, the approval route and the alternative you supported while analysis continued. The relevant judgement balances decision speed with evidence quality and does not assume either automatic approval or an indefinite prohibition is an effective control.
• Evidence supervision and development of a multi-disciplinary tax team, including source-data accountability and review of recurring exceptions. You should have improved audit readiness, maintained confidential transaction information securely and communicated uncertainty plainly to senior executives. The national perimeter requires an institution capable of consistent decisions across entities, with deputies who understand why a position is valid rather than merely repeat its historical treatment.

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 13 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-030.