Chief Financial Officer, Automotive Engineering Centre — Development Commitment Control

The mandate

Automotive development programmes frequently alter requirements after specialist engineering resources have been committed. An India engineering entity needs a CFO who can connect those changes to authorised funding, financial reporting and the centre's continuing obligations. The seat owns the complete entity finance perimeter, with particular attention to work accepted informally across programme interfaces. Engineering leaders determine technical scope and delivery evidence; finance must establish whether the changed commitment has an accountable sponsor, a credible cost view and approval for the resources it consumes.

The CFO is employed on an open-ended basis. An initial eighteen-month agenda will establish development commitment visibility and strengthen reporting and control across an approximately 450-person centre. Nineteen finance professionals report within the entity. Bengaluru is the base, with scheduled international programme reviews. The CFO works with the managing director and engineering-finance counterparts, accepting responsibility for accounts, operating finance and the entity budget while retaining a clear distinction between financial stewardship and technical judgement over the development work itself.

Delegation includes approved operating expenditure, finance staffing and financial treatment through qualified controller review. Material programme funding, changes to intercompany arrangements and additional capital require their established executive approvals. Transfer-pricing and tax conclusions remain with qualified owners. Finance must show where a programme change alters resource commitments or reporting assumptions, including work performed before formal approval arrives. A planned reimbursement is not equivalent to an authorised funding right, and a technically useful engineering activity does not automatically establish the accounting treatment of its cost.

The ongoing role includes financial reporting under applicable entity and group frameworks, risk reviews and financial challenge of engineering plans. It excludes vehicle certification, project design and ownership of programme milestones. Directors expect finance evidence that separates approved work, pending changes and commitments that cannot be cancelled without consequence. The CFO should help the centre respond quickly to genuine development needs while preventing informal requests from accumulating into an unowned obligation. Strong control must support engineering operation rather than simply discovering the financial mismatch after a programme has consumed its resources.

What you will own

• Establish a development commitment view separating approved programme work, pending changes and unavoidable obligations, connecting engineering evidence to finance so the entity can identify resources already committed before accepting further requests.
• Decide operating finance priorities within the approved budget, escalating material programme funding gaps with accountable alternatives rather than assuming an international sponsor will retrospectively reimburse work requested informally.
• Govern entity close and reporting through qualified review, reconciling management programme views to accounts and documenting material judgements across applicable group and statutory frameworks without allowing planning labels to determine booking treatment.
• Challenge change-request economics with engineering and programme owners, requiring evidence of incremental effort, timing and approval while leaving technical feasibility and delivery commitments with the responsible engineering leaders.
• Maintain financial control over equipment and specialist-capacity commitments, testing whether the authorisation reflects the full obligation and whether existing resources can be redeployed before additional expenditure is recommended.
• Present entity financial risks and unresolved funding rights to the managing director and governance route, distinguishing actual commitments from recoveries or approvals still conditional on specialist or sponsor decisions.
• Develop finance managers who can sustain reliable programme interfaces, explain accounting-versus-management differences and preserve an independent financial recommendation without turning every ordinary engineering request into a central approval bottleneck.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring twenty-two to twenty-eight years of experience including substantial senior finance responsibility in automotive R&D, technology, engineering or another relevant multinational entity. Demonstrate deputy-CFO, entity-finance leadership or equivalent executive scope with personal ownership of consequential decisions. Show a development or programme commitment whose funding or approval position required challenge, identifying your action and the operating consequences rather than only the final reported variance.
• Demonstrate recognised accounting or management-accounting preparation and strong applied reporting competence across relevant entity and group frameworks. Explain a judgement where engineering purpose, management budgeting and financial treatment required different evidence. The role does not require statutory audit signing, but it does require technically credible management responsibility and appropriate consultation with accounting, tax and legal specialists when their authoritative conclusions are necessary.
• Have worked closely with engineering and international programme sponsors when scope or resource needs changed. Describe how you distinguished an authorised programme change from a useful request lacking an approved financial right. You must understand technical estimates sufficiently to challenge their economic consequence without claiming responsibility for vehicle design, development feasibility or certification outside finance's competence.
• Have led finance specialists through close, planning and operational reviews, developing managers able to maintain control without continual executive intervention. Evidence should include a proportionate approval method and an uncomfortable funding issue communicated clearly to leadership. The appointment requires practical Bengaluru engagement, planned international interfaces and careful handling of development information, with full entity finance accountability exercised inside explicit technical and governance boundaries.

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 9 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-250.