Chief Talent and Capability Officer — Commercial-Vehicle Platform

The mandate

A commercial-vehicle platform has increased spending on warranty analysis, yet recurring field problems still move slowly from fleet evidence to design and repair change. The constraint is no longer a shortage of courses. Diagnostic expertise is concentrated in a small group, product engineers rotate before field learning matures, and workshops struggle to release technicians for advanced development. A planned talent succession allows the firm to rebuild capability around the warranty system itself.

The Chief Talent and Capability Officer will influence approximately 1,575 employees and material partners across a SEK 12,250 million programme and regional perimeter. The remit includes strategic workforce planning, academies, internal mobility, critical-skill acquisition, leadership development, succession and learning governance. Quality owns defect decisions; engineering owns design; service owns repair execution. This executive must ensure those functions possess the people, proficiency and knowledge flow to act.

Warranty capability will be defined through work. For each costly failure family, the team will identify the tasks required to recognise the symptom, obtain usable data, isolate cause, engineer containment, validate repair and feed prevention into the next product. Role standards will specify evidence of proficiency, not course attendance. Where expertise sits with suppliers or a single veteran, the plan will cover access, knowledge capture, supervised practice and replacement time.

Commercial vehicles create a demanding learning environment. Fleet duty cycles differ, downtime is economically consequential and technicians cannot practise every rare failure. The officer will combine vehicle telemetry, returned parts, simulation, mobile technical support and selected workshop cases into learning pathways. Training vehicles and diagnostic tools must represent the installed fleet, not only forthcoming models. Customer information and safety evidence will remain protected throughout.

Why this seat is open

The incumbent will retire following an agreed transition and remains available for a structured handover. The replacement is planned, not connected to a performance or conduct event. Four to six months are available for selection, references and succession of live programmes.

What you will own

• Establish capability standards for field diagnosis, root-cause, repair validation and prevention.
• Map expertise and fragility across employees, dealers, suppliers and technical partners.
• Create mobility routes connecting workshops, quality, engineering and product programmes.
• Decide which skills to build internally, recruit, contract or secure through partnership.
• Measure application, time-to-proficiency and warranty consequence rather than learning volume.
• Develop successors across talent, technical academies and capability analytics.

The learning portfolio will be governed like investment. Each priority pathway needs a business sponsor, target population, work outcome, proficiency test and decision to scale or stop. Generic leadership catalogues that consume time without addressing operating gaps will be reduced. External providers will be selected for technical depth and transfer of learning assets, with clear rights to content and data.

Internal mobility must work for line managers as well as employees. Temporary assignments will state the capability to be gained, the work to be delivered and the return or progression route. The executive will address pay, shift and location barriers that keep experienced workshop or plant talent outside engineering careers. Critical experts need recognition and succession without being forced into people-management posts.

Capability planning will extend to workforce partners and authorised workshops. Contracts should specify trainer access, assessment standards and continuity of scarce instructors, while commercial teams retain responsibility for supplier economics. Dealer participation will be designed around actual service peaks so development does not create avoidable customer queues.

The first 12 months

Within 90 days, the officer will map the 25 most consequential capability risks, validate them against warranty cohorts and assess the talent leadership team. Immediate cover will be secured for failure investigations and launches dependent on single experts.

By month eight, three technical pathways should operate with observed-work assessment, at least 100 employees should have completed cross-boundary assignments or supervised practice, and the ten most fragile expert positions will carry named succession and knowledge-transfer plans.

At year-end, median time to proficiency in selected roles should fall by 20%, first-line diagnostic accuracy improve by 15 percentage points, and ready cover exist for 75% of critical capability positions. At least two warranty families must show faster root-cause or repair adoption attributable to the new capability system, verified jointly by quality and finance.

What the board will measure

• Scarce expertise available where field failures are encountered.
• Demonstrated proficiency rather than course completion.
• Mobility that connects customer evidence to engineering learning.
• Reduced dependency on single experts and vendors.
• Durable leadership across technical capability functions.

The person

You are a Chief Talent Officer, capability head, technical-academy leader or deputy CHRO with 22–28 years in automotive, industrial technology or another field-service environment. You have influenced at least SEK 7,100 million and 1,100 employees. Your evidence must include a capability intervention tied to quality or warranty, an internal-mobility system and a scarce-expert succession completed beyond launch.

The position is hybrid in Gothenburg with frequent workshop, engineering and fleet visits. Credibility with technicians and chief engineers matters as much as board communication.

Compensation and terms

Base compensation is SEK 2.8–3.8 million plus annual incentive. Performance will consider time-to-proficiency, diagnostic quality, mobility, critical succession and warranty contribution. Final terms follow scope and current mix; notice up to six months is acceptable.

Confidentiality

The platform, fleets, failure evidence, experts and workforce plans remain confidential. More information follows qualification and agreement. Gothenburg and the rounded figures are not intended to identify the employer.