Chief Financial Officer, Media Production Services Platform

The mandate

A mid-sized media production services platform runs concurrent customer assignments through three specialist service units. Production managers understand delivery requirements, but finance receives a fragmented view of resource commitments and customer milestone conditions. The CFO will create accountable financial leadership for that portfolio, ensuring a profitable-looking assignment does not consume cash or capacity on assumptions no commercial owner has substantiated.

The appointment is permanent and open-ended, with an eighteen-month initial agenda covering project commitment control, milestone billing and reliable platform forecasting. The finance team is small and requires hands-on leadership. The executive will work with production and commercial managers to define the records they need, avoiding a control design that looks comprehensive but cannot be maintained during fast-moving project changes.

Production economics can deteriorate through apparently modest scope changes, delayed approvals and commitments made before a customer milestone is achieved. Finance must distinguish approved cost, necessary remaining work and commercially recoverable changes. The CFO will ask whether a revised assignment remains viable and whether its cash profile can be supported alongside other projects, without taking responsibility for creative acceptance or legal interpretation of disputed customer obligations.

The leader controls platform finance, payment prioritisation and financial recommendations on project commitments within delegated limits. Exceptional production expenditure, financing arrangements and material customer concessions require managing-director or board approval. The role does not determine creative content, negotiate intellectual property positions independently or authorise unrelated acquisitions. Its remit is a bounded services platform where credible project cash and control matter to every operating decision.

After twelve months, managers should be able to explain the financial effect of a production change before committing resources. By eighteen months, project records should support reliable close, customer billing and a cash forecast that recognises shared-capacity conflicts. The ongoing CFO then sustains that operating finance capability, develops the team and supports selective growth without allowing speed or customer urgency to become a permanent exemption from accountability.

What you will own

• Establish a production commitment register covering approved scope, supplier obligations and remaining work, enabling managers to assess the full financial consequence of a change before releasing additional resources.
• Decide the financial review requirements for customer milestones, reconciling billing expectations to acceptance evidence so finance does not forecast collection solely from a production team's internal completion estimate.
• Build project profitability and cash views that distinguish cost-to-complete, unagreed changes and committed supplier payments, exposing assignments whose accounting margin does not protect the platform's near-term liquidity.
• Govern exceptional expenditure escalation with production owners, documenting the reason, funding consequence and approval rather than allow urgent requests to bypass the platform's financial decision record repeatedly.
• Challenge shared-capacity assumptions across concurrent assignments, identifying where an attractive new project depends on resources already committed or creates an unfunded need for external delivery support.
• Develop proportionate financial controls and close ownership in the nine-person team, ensuring critical reconciliations and review duties remain effective during peak production workloads and staff absence.
• Present a monthly platform cash and project decision pack that highlights customer conditions, commitment changes and unresolved commercial recovery, giving leaders practical alternatives rather than a retrospective margin explanation.

Candidate qualifications

• At least seven years of finance experience with substantial senior responsibility in media production, multi-project services or a comparable portfolio environment is required. Identify a project whose financial position changed before the accounting result revealed it, and demonstrate the commitment, billing or remaining-work evidence you used to influence the operating decision personally.
• Strong professional accounting standing must accompany practical project and working-capital judgement. Explain how you separated approved production cost from uncertain customer recovery and obtained qualified contract or tax input where needed. Applicants should be able to maintain reliable records while recognising that finance analysis cannot establish creative acceptance or legal entitlement without the relevant specialist evidence.
• Candidates must show experience designing usable controls for small operating teams under time pressure. Describe an urgent expenditure request you challenged, the approval condition retained and how the process improved without delaying every legitimate production need. Evidence should include hands-on reconciliation and clear financial ownership rather than dependence on external advisers to explain routine project balances.
• Leadership evidence should show developing finance staff, working constructively with production managers and communicating adverse financial choices clearly. Provide a case where declining or revising an attractive assignment protected shared resources or cash, including the alternative adopted. The relevant leadership record combines practical team development, project-finance judgement and accountable stewardship of the operating platform's commitments.

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 15 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-208.