Interim Chief Product Officer — Communications Platform Compliance

The mandate

Two messaging ecosystems suspended high-volume sender routes after consent provenance and template controls failed partner review, and the product chief resigned amid customer escalation. Traffic has been rerouted at higher cost, but growth cannot resume until sender identity, consent and abuse response are built into the product.

The interim must join within three weeks for nine months. A permanent CPO search begins after the first suspended route is reinstated, with extension possible for a five-week transition if partner approval arrives late.

Handover requires all priority routes to regain approved status, sender onboarding and template change controls to pass independent samples, abuse-response times to remain within threshold for ninety days, and the successor to approve one new channel launch using the repaired framework.

The interim may suspend customers or routes, re-sequence the ₹10 crore product portfolio and choose verification providers within budget. Commercial compensation above ₹4 crore, permanent leadership hiring, entry into a new channel, policy exceptions for major customers and strategic carrier commitments require CEO or committee approval.

General CRM features, sales territory design and telecom network procurement are outside scope. The product seat owns platform controls and customer workflow, not carrier regulation or account revenue targets.

Why this seat is open

Partner suspension demonstrated that compliance checks were treated as operational afterthoughts rather than product primitives. Existing leaders are aligned either to growth or trust queues and cannot reset their boundaries independently. A temporary CPO can encode the required controls before permanent growth resumes.

What you will own

• Decide which sender cohorts, templates and routes remain blocked based on identity, consent, complaint and abuse evidence.
• Redesign sender onboarding with verifiable entity, purpose, consent source, traffic pattern and escalation ownership.
• Build versioned template and campaign controls that preserve approval evidence through every customer change.
• Approve route reinstatement packs for messaging partners and answer unresolved control challenges directly.
• Set abuse detection and response thresholds with automated suspension, investigation and customer appeal paths.
• Prove ninety days of compliant operation across the highest-volume reinstated routes.
• Transfer partner commitments, trust metrics, product debt, customer exceptions and the funded roadmap to the successor.

Candidate qualifications

• Led product in CPaaS, telecom software, messaging, identity or another trust-sensitive communications platform.
• Recovered suspended sender, carrier or ecosystem access after consent, abuse or identity failures.
• Embedded verification and policy controls into product journeys rather than relying on manual operations.
• Managed product, trust, analytics and partner-integration leaders across high-volume traffic.
• Made customer suspension decisions where concentrated revenue was at risk.
• Understands Indian commercial communications, consent, sender identity and platform-abuse expectations.

Non-negotiables

• Available for Bengaluru-based leadership within three weeks.
• No current advisory or financial relationship with messaging ecosystems or verification vendors.
• Will not grant high-volume customer exceptions without retained consent evidence.
• Must have owned a live product with external platform or carrier dependencies.

1. 49 words maximum. Confirm availability and disclose any carrier, channel or verification-vendor conflict.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a suspended communications route you restored and the product control that mattered.
3. 49 words maximum. Which sender-onboarding evidence would you refuse to treat as self-attested?