Interim Associate Director Close Operations — Finance-Service Boundary Continuity

The mandate

An approved transfer of accounting responsibilities is underway between operating teams and a finance centre, and the close-service seat needs an executive holder through it. Several decisions about journals, reconciliation queries and evidence requests have been held informally rather than transferred with the task lists. An interim associate director will take the expanded seat on 26 October 2026 for six months, ending on 26 April 2027 without extension. Recruitment for the permanent associate director will run alongside the cover, rather than leaving the interim to become the only person who knows how the transferred work operates.

The immediate task is to preserve an accountable close across a changing service boundary. A reconciliation can arrive with its preparation completed but no reviewer authorised to clear it; a journal can retain an old approval route after the team that supplied its evidence has moved. You will identify who prepares, reviews, decides and retains the record for each transferred activity. Entity controllers continue to own material accounting conclusions and financial statements. Transfer status cannot become an excuse to bypass those decisions, and a completed migration checklist cannot prove that the receiving team has actually assumed the control.

Twenty-seven accountants, reviewers and evidence coordinators report through the interim seat. Within approved close policy you may assign work, authorise ordinary journals, reject unsupported clearance and change service escalation routes. Controllers retain material estimates and exceptional adjustments; the services director approves permanent staffing and significant operating-model changes. The interim cannot alter accounting policy, replace the finance platform or renegotiate the underlying service agreement. The board reserves restructuring and additional investment. Those boundaries must remain clear even when an urgent evidence request arrives between the outgoing and receiving teams.

Handover requires three supported closes with named preparation, review and decision owners, traceable retained evidence and a residual-action register accepted by the controllers. The permanent successor must then lead a complete close cycle and answer a sampled evidence request without the interim reconstructing the activity. New Delhi is the onsite base, with Gurugram team engagement and remote entity reviews. Success is not the disappearance of transfer issues from a tracker; it is a functioning ownership boundary where late inputs, changed estimates and unresolved reconciliations still reach the correct authorised decision after the temporary leader leaves.

What you will own

• Establish a transferred-activity ownership map that separates preparation, review, accounting approval and evidence custody, resolving unassigned decisions before the next close relies on the receiving team's task-completion status.
• Decide first-close priorities from unsupported balances and broken decision routes, protecting necessary controller review rather than advancing every migration item according to its original administrative target date.
• Authorise ordinary journals within delegated policy through current source and approval evidence, requiring renewed authority where an outgoing team's historic approval no longer applies to the receiving responsibility.
• Restore reconciliation escalation across the service boundary with named counterpart owners, distinguishing a missing input from a disputed accounting conclusion and retaining the unresolved decision for controller review.
• Set evidence custody for transferred activities through retrievable versions and access owners, testing whether an authorised reviewer can locate the actual support rather than a migration team's summary assertion.
• Run three close-cycle continuity reviews with accountants and controllers, recording late input, changed estimate and incomplete handoff cases so subsequent cycles demonstrate corrected ownership rather than repeated personal intervention.
• Induct the permanent associate director through an independently led close and sampled evidence request, securing controller acceptance of residual actions before the six-month cover ends and interim access is withdrawn.

Candidate qualifications

• Describe responsibility for a substantial close recovery, operational finance cutover or material transfer of accounting work. Comparable multi-team control changes are relevant; the evidence must show how you restored preparation, reviewer authority and retained support when responsibility was uncertain. Identify a decision you personally made, an accounting conclusion you reserved to the controller and the test proving that the receiving operation could continue without you.
• Bring 18–22 years in R2R, controllership delivery or shared-services accounting, with senior-manager leadership and CMA or equivalent technical accounting competence. You must interrogate journals and reconciliations under a live deadline, not only maintain migration schedules. Project-management or improvement qualifications should be visible in disciplined ownership and sequencing, while remaining subordinate to valid accounting support and delegated review authority.
• Show how you preserved audit-evidence continuity across a team or process change, including a source version, authorised custodian and retrievable supporting record. Explain an evidence request that exposed a control gap despite completed processing. The remit demands candour about residual uncertainty and collaboration with authorised auditors and controllers; it does not confer an external audit opinion or licence to approve material policy exceptions.
• Be available for the 26 October start and exclusive five-day weekly cover, including onsite close periods. Demonstrate development of a deputy or successor who ran a cycle independently, and explain what you withdrew from your own involvement to prove the transfer. Secure entity information, constructive challenge across outgoing and receiving teams, and refusal to conceal unresolved ownership behind service performance metrics are essential.

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 12 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-INT-2026-IND-165.