Product-Ownership Migration Leader

The mandate

Pune now delivers most engineering for two industrial IoT products, yet overseas leaders retain customer prioritisation, roadmap, pricing input and release decisions. Conflicting commitments produced an unsafe late change and the India product executive was removed after accepting accountability without matching authority. Teams now wait across time zones while strategic customers question who owns outcomes.

The interim must start in Pune within two weeks and lead for fourteen months. A permanent India product search begins after Pune owns one product through a full planning and release cycle, expected in month seven. The successor will overlap for six weeks and chair a customer council, portfolio trade-off and the final production release.

Handover requires Pune product leaders to own discovery, roadmap, outcome, release and customer escalation within defined commercial boundaries; engineering and product accountability to align; source shadow roles to exit; two products to complete exercised decisions and releases; leadership succession to cover critical roles; and the permanent appointee to accept portfolio, customer and residual-risk registers.

The interim may stop releases, prioritise backlogs, set product forums, reassign existing roles and commit up to ₹45 crore within approved portfolio budgets. Pricing, permanent hiring, market exit, contractual concessions and single investments above ₹9 crore require board or product-officer approval. The seat cannot waive industrial safety, security or customer acceptance controls.

New market entry, hardware manufacturing, enterprise sales reorganisation and products outside the named portfolio are explicitly out of scope. The mandate owns the product authority transfer, Pune leadership, customer and engineering interfaces, roadmap economics, release governance, source-team exit and permanent succession.

Why this seat is open

The unsafe change exposed the mismatch between India accountability and overseas decision control, and the executive removal left the centre without a credible product voice. Engineering scale now magnifies delay rather than product impact. Temporary authority is needed to move complete ownership, exercise it with customers and releases, and induct a permanent leader into a proven role.

What you will own

• Reconstruct discovery, roadmap, customer, architecture, quality, release and commercial decisions across Pune and three source-product hubs.
• Assign product authority with explicit thresholds for customer commitments, pricing input, investment, industrial risk and executive escalation.
• Align product managers and engineering leaders around measurable equipment outcomes, installed-base evidence and one prioritised portfolio.
• Remove source shadow roles through exercised Pune-led customer discovery, roadmap arbitration, launch readiness and release decisions.
• Build senior product, design and customer-engineering succession with two-deep cover for safety-sensitive and revenue-critical scopes.
• Command planning, field-incident, launch and strategic-account scenarios that expose undocumented overseas vetoes or missing customer context.
• Transfer the portfolio, decision ledger, installed-base commitments, talent map, exceptions and governance through successor-chaired investment forums.

Candidate qualifications

• Held global product authority inside an India engineering centre for industrial software, connected equipment or comparable enterprise technology.
• Migrated roadmap, customer-discovery, investment and release decisions across borders rather than relocating product-management job titles alone.
• Aligned product and engineering accountability after offshore delivery growth had separated installed-base evidence from prioritisation.
• Recovered an unsafe, commercially damaging or late decision caused by split authority and time-zone escalation.
• Built India product leaders credible with plant operators, strategic accounts, architects and headquarters investment forums.
• Handed a transferred portfolio to permanent leadership through observed quarterly planning, customer commitments and production release cycles.

Non-negotiables

• Can start on site in Pune within two weeks and travel monthly to named source product hubs.
• Will accept exclusive executive responsibility and continuous escalation for the two-product portfolio.
• Brings global product ownership from an India centre; programme delivery or engineering management alone is insufficient.
• Must disclose relationships with affected customers, competitors, vendors, recruiters and investors.

1. 49 words maximum. State your earliest Pune start and the largest product authority migration you personally completed.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a roadmap decision an India leader could not make despite nominal product accountability.
3. 49 words maximum. Which customer-facing event best proves product ownership has genuinely moved?