Strategic Forecasting and External Outlook Senior Director

The mandate

The Senior Director will establish a disciplined route from external developments to internal financial scenarios without claiming foresight that the evidence cannot support. External inputs are plentiful, but relevance, provenance, horizon and transmission into operating drivers vary. The role will turn selected signals into owned assumptions, ranges and decision triggers.

This permanent portfolio covers external-assumption policy, indicator selection, transmission models, scenario narrative and executive outlook. It must prevent consensus forecasts from being treated as facts, distinguish cyclical movement from structural change and preserve minority views when their decision consequence is material.

The Senior Director can approve external-data and assumption standards, challenge source quality and require scenarios for consequential uncertainty. Strategy and operating leaders retain all decisions. The role owns the integrity of how external evidence enters planning and how quickly the internal view responds when signals change.

During year one, the leader will create a signal library, build transmission paths for priority variables, conduct three outlook forums and backtest indicator usefulness. Success means earlier, more proportionate action and fewer unexplained changes introduced through generic external overlays.

What you will own

• Define source, provenance, update, confidence and permitted-use standards for external planning assumptions.
• Select a limited indicator set based on transmission to internal drivers and decision lead time, not publication visibility.
• Model how external movements affect demand, price, cost, currency, capital, working capital or capacity through explicit lags and ranges.
• Establish structural, cyclical and event-driven classifications with evidence thresholds for changing the central view.
• Convene three executive outlook forums that focus on choices, triggers and preserved options rather than prediction debate.
• Maintain dissent and alternative hypotheses where potential decision consequence justifies continued monitoring.
• Backtest indicator timeliness, false signals, revised data and transmission strength, retiring inputs that add noise.
• Develop internal economists and FP&A leaders able to translate external evidence without overclaiming causality.

Candidate qualifications

• At least 16 years in strategic FP&A, economics, external forecasting or scenario leadership, including senior team responsibility.
• Evidence of linking an external signal to a financial driver early enough to alter an executive choice.
• Strong knowledge of leading and lagging indicators, data revisions, transmission lags, scenario ranges and structural-break judgement.
• A case where you rejected a popular consensus view because its internal transmission mechanism was weak.
• Experience preserving a minority scenario without allowing it to dominate the central plan absent evidence.
• Ability to communicate external uncertainty concisely to executive audiences in English and French working contexts.
• A track record of backtesting and retiring indicators that appeared informative but did not improve decisions.

Working terms and boundaries

• This is a continuing appointment with first-year gates after source policy, signal library, each outlook forum and annual backtest.
• External-assumption standards and scenario analysis are included; strategic and operating decisions remain with authorised leaders.
• Remote work is supported, with scheduled Montreal travel for quarterly outlook and annual planning sessions.
• The team will not present consensus forecasts as certainty or publish identifiable organisation assumptions externally.
• Year-one completion requires operated transmission models, three decision forums, backtested signals and capable internal succession.

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 FPA-PER-2026-YUL-56.