Interim Chief Operating Officer — Telecom Network Carve-out

The mandate

The sale of a network-services division completed after the selected COO withdrew for personal reasons, leaving shared processes, people and tools dependent on the former parent. Transition service agreements are running, and any unplanned break could affect national network availability.

The interim must start within three weeks for a fixed eighteen-month assignment through separation and two standalone operating quarters. Permanent recruitment begins after the target organisation is staffed in month nine, with an eight-week transfer before expiry.

Handover is complete when all critical transition services have exited or moved to approved extensions, standalone operations meet availability and restoration SLAs for two quarters, workforce and supplier transfers are settled, and the permanent COO has run one full operating review.

The interim may design operating processes, deploy the approved separation budget, appoint temporary workstream heads and accept TSA exits within tested criteria. Workforce actions above 5%, separation spend beyond ₹75 crore, strategic supplier awards above ₹100 crore, site exits and material SLA changes require steering committee or board approval.

Network expansion, commercial pricing and acquisition of additional infrastructure are excluded. The assignment creates an independent operator from the transacted perimeter; it does not redesign the asset owner's long-term portfolio.

Why this seat is open

The planned leader withdrew after close, when the legal entity could no longer rely on parent executive authority. Functional heads understand their domains but cannot adjudicate cross-TSA risk. An interim COO provides time-bounded separation leadership while preserving the option to recruit for the eventual steady-state business.

What you will own

• Sequence every transition-service exit by customer risk, technical dependency, workforce readiness and contractual deadline.
• Decide the standalone operating model for network control, field service, service management, spares and facilities.
• Approve TSA exit only after parallel operation, data reconciliation, access removal and recovery testing.
• Reconcile separation spend, stranded cost, supplier commitments and target run rate against the transaction case.
• Resolve workforce and knowledge-transfer gaps through named retention, documentation and temporary capacity decisions.
• Demonstrate two quarters of standalone SLA performance without undisclosed parent workarounds.
• Transfer supplier positions, operating risks, TSA exceptions, organisation decisions and the first annual plan to the permanent COO.

Candidate qualifications

• Served as COO or network-operations chief in telecom infrastructure or another nationwide critical-service business.
• Led a major carve-out, separation or TSA exit while preserving live service performance.
• Directed network control, field, supplier, spares and service-management organisations at national scale.
• Managed workforce and knowledge transfer across buyer and seller boundaries.
• Governed separation economics including stranded cost, one-time spend and standalone run rate.
• Can evidence clean operational independence rather than legal separation alone.

Non-negotiables

• Available for full-time Pune leadership within three weeks.
• No continuing role with the seller, buyer transaction adviser or strategic network supplier.
• Will not approve a TSA exit without tested standalone recovery.
• Must have direct responsibility for nationwide service availability.

1. 49 words maximum. State your start date and disclose any buyer, seller or supplier conflict.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a TSA exit you delayed and the operational evidence that was missing.
3. 49 words maximum. Which two measures prove a network operation is genuinely standalone?