Principal FP&A Performance Architecture Director — Decision-Pack Metric Contracts

The mandate

A virtual CFO practice produces financial performance packs whose familiar metric names conceal different definitions and evidence dates across engagements. Directors may see contribution, cash conversion or forecast confidence displayed consistently while the underlying perimeter and period are not comparable. The principal FP&A performance architecture director will define metric contracts and a decision-pack architecture that makes those meanings explicit. The four-month engagement begins on 26 October 2026 and closes on 26 February 2027 through artifact tests and internal transfer, not improved trading results or acceptance of a business strategy.

Each metric contract must state the business question, approved definition, source basis, reporting perimeter, evidence cut-off and permitted aggregation. A ratio cannot be added like a monetary amount, and the average of local percentages may not represent the combined result. A cash measure must explain whether restricted amounts are included; a profit comparison must preserve the treatment of approved management adjustments and closed-book facts. Finance owners approve the definitions. The principal designs a usable architecture that retains these choices rather than imposing one universal KPI whose apparently consistent presentation erases material differences in the underlying businesses.

The 27 November 2026 milestone delivers a deidentified metric-meaning diagnostic and agreed priority contracts. By 15 January 2027, the second milestone supplies the decision-pack schema, aggregation rules and exception cases. Final delivery on 26 February 2027 covers internal-led pack production, definition-change tests and transfer of the maintained standards guide. Payments are 25%, 35% and 40% on acceptance. Three weekly days are reserved. The sponsor provides six finance leads and analysts, permitted deidentified packs, source extracts, existing definitions and authorised decisions where a metric's meaning remains disputed.

The finance practice executive and FP&A standards lead jointly accept the artifacts. Tests use unseen period, perimeter and source-date changes, requiring reviewers to reproduce reported values and explain when two apparently similar measures should not be compared or aggregated. Internal leads must produce two packs and maintain an approved definition change without the principal's live interpretation, preserving earlier versions. Acceptance is independent of board approval of a recommendation. Accounting-policy formulation, software deployment, historical archive migration and live business decisions are excluded. Additional metric families or operating populations require written scope, fee and schedule agreement before design expands.

What you will own

• Diagnose priority metric meanings through deidentified pack and source comparisons, identifying where the same label hides a different period, perimeter or treatment before the November diagnostic declares the measures comparable.
• Define metric contracts with authorised finance owners that retain business question, source basis and evidence cut-off, separating an agreed financial fact from an unapproved interpretation or incomplete operating input.
• Design aggregation rules for amounts, ratios and weighted measures through worked financial examples, preventing local percentages or incompatible perimeters from creating a plausible but unsupported combined performance result.
• Build decision-pack architecture that exposes definition and evidence exceptions near the affected measure, ensuring directors can interpret the financial implication without searching for a buried caveat or relying on oral explanation.
• Test period and source-date changes through unseen cases, showing when a value should move, remain qualified or cease to be comparable rather than silently refreshing every metric under its unchanged label.
• Run two internal-led pack production cycles and a definition-change exercise, checking that reviewers reproduce values and preserve prior contracts without the principal adjudicating the meaning of each number.
• Transfer the maintained standards guide and decision-pack schema with approval and update ownership, enabling later metric additions through controlled review while live accounting and business decisions remain with their authorised owners.

Candidate qualifications

• Describe corporate FP&A, virtual CFO or commercial-finance work where a familiar metric name concealed materially different financial meanings. Explain the business question, source basis and decision consequence you clarified. The proof must show your own architecture or definition judgement and the authorised owner who accepted it, not simply selection of a dashboard tool or redesign of presentation formatting without testing what the reported numbers represented.
• Demonstrate practical judgement about aggregation, period alignment and management adjustments. Give an example where averaging ratios, combining incompatible perimeters or mixing source dates produced a misleading result despite correct local calculations. You must preserve accounting facts and approved interpretations separately, obtain qualified decisions when necessary and avoid implying that a consistent pack layout establishes comparability or validates the underlying financial treatment independently.
• Bring 22–28 years across corporate planning, P&L finance, controllership or virtual CFO practice with substantial senior specialist standing. Applied professional finance or accounting competence must support rigorous metric analysis and constructive challenge of experienced finance leads. The principal role increases architecture and transfer responsibility without taking executive control of operating businesses, determining accounting policy or replacing directors' judgement about the action a performance pack should support.
• Reserve three weekly days through the four-month calendar and show an internal transfer tested on unfamiliar inputs. Explain failed cases, authorised definition changes and the maintained version history. Secure deidentification, purpose-limited data access and written scope control are essential. Commercial acceptance must rest on reproducible metric contracts and internal capability, not a promise of improved performance, favourable board decisions or continued consultant availability to explain ordinary packs.

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 12 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-CON-2026-IND-181.