AI SaaS Business Finance and Unit Economics Head — Interim

The mandate

Product forecasts treat customer growth and inference expenditure through separate assumptions. A feature can increase engagement while weakening contribution, and an enterprise contract can look valuable before its usage burden is understood. The interim will hold the financial business-partner seat, making those economics decision-ready without assuming model architecture or CFO accounting authority.

Business-finance cover opens on 19 October 2026 for nine months. The working rhythm is five days weekly, combining Mumbai analytical leadership with scheduled global product decisions. A permanent business-finance search runs concurrently. The first financial review must establish which product and customer behaviours drive inference, implementation and support costs, then identify where revenue assumptions fail to reflect those usage patterns.

Handover requires a source-linked unit-economics bridge, a cash forecast with explicit product drivers and business owners able to explain the financial consequence of changing usage or pricing. The successor must run a product-investment review and refresh the contribution model. Completion is the stable transfer of financial judgement, not a guarantee of a fundraising event or a predetermined margin.

The head may set business-finance definitions, reject unsupported planning inputs and allocate existing analyst capacity. Binding pricing changes, model infrastructure commitments and permanent hiring need the appropriate product or CFO approval. Accounting policy and external reporting remain with controllership; finance may challenge a product case but cannot unilaterally disable customer functionality or change architecture.

Enterprise accounting remediation, model-development leadership and unrestricted capital raising are excluded. The sponsor provides authorised usage and cost extracts, contractual revenue definitions and nominated product owners. The role requires head-of-finance or business-finance scope that connects strategic planning with hands-on economic analysis, not a wider executive title detached from the actual decision rights.

What you will own

• Establish the usage-to-contribution bridge with product and cost owners, separating inference, implementation and support drivers so customer growth does not conceal worsening economic quality.
• Decide business-finance readiness for product cases, requiring source-linked revenue and usage assumptions before an investment recommendation reaches executive approval, with the underlying cost evidence retained.
• Rebuild cash scenarios around contract economics and operating usage, identifying when a promising customer cohort creates funding needs ahead of durable contribution.
• Set driver ownership and refresh discipline for product forecasts, retaining the evidence that explains changed assumptions rather than allowing unexplained central overrides.
• Reallocate existing analysts toward material usage and pricing uncertainties, documenting what lower-priority planning work receives less capacity and the accepted consequence.
• Chair product-finance reviews that preserve architecture and accounting approval boundaries, producing a clear financial recommendation without assuming the authority to deploy.
• Transfer the unit-economics model and investment judgement record through live successor execution, confirming ownership of unresolved cost and customer-behaviour limitations.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate business-finance leadership in AI SaaS or a technology model with usage-sensitive costs. Explain a product or customer decision you shaped, the cost driver tested and why conventional revenue growth did not adequately describe value.
• Show hands-on unit-economics modelling with source lineage. Candidates should describe a usage pattern that changed contribution, how implementation or support effort was attributed and the uncertainty retained where data could not support a precise allocation.
• Evidence strategic planning and cash judgement linked to product behaviour. Provide a case where growth increased near-term funding needs, explaining the financial recommendation and the executive owner who approved action.
• Demonstrate leadership through business-partner challenge at functional-head scope. Explain how a product sponsor's preferred assumption was tested, what changed and which architecture or accounting authority remained outside your seat.
• Provide durable model and decision transfer proof. Show how another finance owner processed a fresh usage case, preserved the original pricing and cost assumptions and identified the evidence needed before recommending a change. Candidates should explain how a customer appearing profitable at average usage could become uneconomic at its contractual operating pattern, and how that risk remained visible through the forecast.

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 10 October 2026. Mandate reference PCT-INT-2026-IND-18.