Interim Senior Director Tax Controversy — Case Evidence and National Leadership Transition

The mandate

A technology business-process services group needs senior ownership of its national tax-controversy portfolio: a fragmented set of cases and several time-sensitive evidence requests. The group is expanding the seat to senior director and will run a permanent search in parallel. You will begin on 26 October 2026 for a fixed eighteen-month term. The role provides accountable leadership of facts, deadlines and delegated technical decisions; it is not an undertaking that every inherited dispute will be resolved within the engagement.

The opening phase establishes a reliable case register covering periods, entities, procedural status, evidence gaps and professional advisers. Some files mix historical operating descriptions with current ones, while tax and finance teams maintain different assumptions about disputed amounts. You will reconcile the factual record and identify which decisions need counsel, regional tax approval or accounting review. Each imminent response must have an accountable evidence owner and an approved route. The goal is to prevent a weak process from compromising a position whose substantive merits still require careful specialist judgement.

Twelve managers and coordinators report within the interim perimeter. You may prioritise their work, approve routine factual responses within policy and authorise adviser support inside the agreed budget. Material litigation strategy, settlement proposals and novel technical positions require the regional head's approval with counsel; the accounting owner determines provisions. You cannot sign legal submissions reserved for authorised representatives or make settlement promises outside delegation. New tax planning structures, general finance transformation and replacing external counsel across the whole group are excluded from this cover mandate.

Handover on 26 April 2028 requires an inducted permanent successor, a fully owned deadline calendar and evidence-backed status for every material selected case. Three successive governance reviews must show that managers can produce coherent packs and escalate uncertainty without emergency file reconstruction. Cases still before authorities remain open with documented next actions; their survival is not a reason to extend the fixed term. Bengaluru is the base, with planned entity and counsel visits. The exit test concerns durable leadership and evidence control, not winning disputes or minimising reported exposures.

What you will own

• Establish the national case register with verified procedural deadlines, periods and entity ownership, identifying immediate response risks before incomplete historical files dictate the priorities of the whole controversy team.
• Decide evidence-recovery priorities using material exposure and upcoming decisions, directing managers toward source gaps that affect the case rather than treating every missing document as an equally urgent investigation.
• Approve routine factual response packs within delegation, checking consistency with prior submissions and operating records while reserving legal representation and material strategy for counsel and authorised regional leaders.
• Build the controversy-to-finance bridge that distinguishes disputed amounts, accounting treatment and expected cash obligations, preventing legal optimism or historical case labels from becoming unsupported assumptions in the close.
• Set adviser and entity review forums with clear decision routes, recording unresolved interpretation and required facts so recurring meetings produce accountable next actions rather than another unowned summary of case status.
• Induct the permanent senior director through three live governance reviews and the evidence index, confirming managers can maintain deadlines and coherent escalation when the interim no longer reconstructs the portfolio for them.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate deep Indian tax-controversy management across direct tax, GST, transfer pricing or related technology-service matters. Describe a fragmented case file you personally reconstructed and the consequential decision it enabled. The required proof concerns facts, judgement and process ownership; a favourable final ruling without clear evidence of your contribution does not establish readiness to hold this leadership seat.
• Have twenty-two to twenty-eight years of tax experience with senior specialist or functional-head accountability and strong professional accounting or tax competence. You must understand how procedural deadlines, technical argument and source evidence interact, recognise when authorised representation is required and distinguish controversy management from financial provisioning. Demonstrate disciplined collaboration with counsel and clear respect for the professional responsibilities retained by the appointed legal representatives.
• Evidence prioritisation and delegated authority during a difficult leadership or compliance transition. Explain how you protected urgent responses, allocated scarce specialist capacity and escalated material strategy without either overstepping or allowing every routine decision to wait for the regional head. Experience should include correcting inconsistent factual narratives and maintaining a transparent record of uncertainty rather than claiming that every historical weakness could be repaired immediately.
• Be available for the fixed eighteen-month engagement beginning 26 October 2026, with five days weekly and planned national travel. Show a prior technical-team handover with deputies, an evidence index and owned residual actions. You should be comfortable leaving genuine disputes open under a capable successor, handling privileged and confidential information appropriately and refusing to tie your completion or remuneration to a judicial outcome outside your authority.

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 8 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-INT-2026-IND-033.