Interim Chief Operating Officer — E-commerce Peak Recovery

The mandate

A warehouse automation upgrade failed endurance testing six weeks before the festive peak, and the COO departed after contingency capacity proved overstated. Order intake remains open, but inventory placement, manual fallback, carrier allocation and customer promises need one executive command.

The interim must begin within ten days for eight months, spanning peak, returns and post-event automation recovery. The permanent COO search will start after peak stabilisation, with extension possible for one month if successor notice overlaps the final resilience test.

Handover is complete when the peak clears within agreed order-age and cancellation thresholds, the automation operates for ninety days at designed throughput, inventory and carrier reconciliations are clean, and the permanent COO has led one network stress exercise.

The interim may cap order promises, rebalance inventory, add temporary labour and carrier capacity, and deploy ₹25 crore of approved contingency. Customer compensation above ₹10 crore, permanent site or workforce changes, automation replacement and logistics contracts over ₹50 crore require CEO or board approval.

Merchandising, marketplace seller strategy and long-term warehouse expansion are excluded. The brief owns fulfilment of accepted orders and recovery of the commissioned automation, not assortment or demand generation.

Why this seat is open

The failed test revealed that peak plans assumed capacity the network could not safely deliver. Regional operators cannot make national customer-promise trade-offs from within their facilities. A temporary COO provides crisis authority without prejudging the steady-state structure.

What you will own

• Set daily order-promise caps by inventory confidence, facility capacity, carrier availability and customer-age risk.
• Decide inventory and labour rebalancing across nodes using expected demand, throughput and recovery time.
• Validate manual fallback through realistic volume, safety, accuracy and cut-off tests before peak activation.
• Approve automation return to service only after endurance, exception, recovery and inventory-reconciliation criteria pass.
• Allocate carrier volume through capacity evidence, lane performance, claims and concentration constraints.
• Publish a reconciled peak outcome covering accepted demand, ageing, cancellations, costs, returns and customer compensation.
• Transfer network controls, automation defects, supplier claims, talent decisions and the next stress plan to the permanent COO.

Candidate qualifications

• Served as COO, fulfilment chief or national operations director in large e-commerce, retail or parcel networks.
• Led a major seasonal peak after automation, facility or carrier capacity failed late in planning.
• Directed thousands of employees and partners across multi-node fulfilment and transport.
• Made customer-promise and order-cap decisions using real capacity rather than sales targets.
• Recovered warehouse automation through endurance, exception and inventory-control proof.
• Presented peak economics and customer outcomes to boards with accountable variance explanations.

Non-negotiables

• Can assume Delhi NCR command within ten days and remain available throughout peak.
• No current financial interest in the automation integrator or major carriers.
• Will cap demand when safe capacity is unsupported.
• Must have held national fulfilment authority during a high-volume event.

1. 49 words maximum. Confirm your start date and full availability through the peak calendar.
2. 49 words maximum. Quantify a peak-capacity shortfall you managed and the customer outcome.
3. 49 words maximum. Which endurance-test failure would keep warehouse automation offline?