AI Practice and P&L Leadership Bridge — Interim

The mandate

The AI practice requires interim leadership to establish ownership of commercial and delivery acceptance gates that can be transferred to the permanent practice leader. Demonstrations look promising, but the route from prototype to accountable service is inconsistent. The interim will hold the practice leadership seat, joining commercial selection, delivery capacity and responsible deployment without claiming unrestricted authority over enterprise data or customer risk acceptance.

Practice cover begins on 19 October 2026 and runs for twelve months, requiring five working days weekly. Bengaluru leadership sessions are combined with approved enterprise-customer and partner visits. A permanent practice-head search runs concurrently. The first operating review must identify committed work, unfunded solution effort and proposals whose economics depend on untested adoption or inference assumptions.

Handover requires a practice decision calendar, evidenced opportunity economics and deployment gates that delivery owners can execute. The successor must lead a commercial review and approve a representative transition from pilot to service using the retained evidence. Closing a particular deal or achieving a predetermined AI revenue target is not the exit condition.

The head may prioritise existing solution capacity, set practice delivery gates and approve commercial analysis within the chief executive's delegation. Binding contracts, permanent executive hires and new platform investments require executive approval. Customer data permissions, legal acceptability and enterprise risk exceptions remain with the authorised owners; the interim cannot bypass them to accelerate an AI demonstration.

General corporate strategy, unrestricted model research and replacement of every enterprise data platform are excluded. The sponsor provides authorised opportunity records, delivery capability evidence and nominated risk and commercial contacts. The role requires proven AI practice, P&L and deployment leadership, including difficult stop-or-proceed decisions that reconcile opportunity economics with the capacity and controls needed for an operable service.

What you will own

• Decide opportunity readiness within delegation, requiring evidence of customer value, delivery capacity and operating economics before scarce practice effort is committed to a proposal.
• Establish a practice P&L bridge that separates funded delivery, reusable capability investment and speculative solution work, making the cost of strategic bets visible.
• Set pilot-to-service gates around permissions, evaluation, human escalation and support ownership, preventing a successful demonstration from being mistaken for production readiness.
• Reallocate existing solution and delivery capacity toward approved priorities, documenting which opportunities are declined or staged and the financial consequence of that choice.
• Authorise practice delivery exceptions only within written limits, escalating customer risk, contract and platform commitments that require executive or specialist approval.
• Chair commercial and responsible-deployment reviews that preserve customer data and legal boundaries, producing a dated decision rather than an ambiguous promise to proceed carefully.
• Transfer the practice operating pack, opportunity judgements and deployment controls to the successor, observing a live review and obtaining acceptance of unresolved commitments.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate AI practice leadership with direct commercial or P&L accountability. Explain an enterprise opportunity you accepted, staged or declined, the economics considered and the delivery capability that determined your decision.
• Show enterprise transformation experience that progressed beyond a prototype. Candidates should describe adoption, evaluation and support ownership, including a deployment that was stopped because an operating prerequisite remained unresolved.
• Evidence responsible AI judgement through real approval boundaries. Explain how permissions, human escalation or unacceptable failure modes changed the commercial route, and distinguish your practice authority from customer or legal risk acceptance.
• Provide leadership proof in building a practice operating model, allocating scarce capability and managing ecosystem relationships without promising unapproved platform commitments. Show how opportunity prioritisation changed a practice's capacity allocation, which delivery commitment was deferred and how the revised commercial plan preserved an accountable service owner.
• Show a durable transfer of practice decisions to another leader or operating team. Explain the records, evaluation evidence and commercial boundaries retained, including how an incoming owner could reproduce a pilot-to-service judgement without relying on your personal reputation. Describe how a practice opportunity's economics were updated when deployment permissions or support obligations changed. The retained commercial evidence should show the revised effort, the decision owner and why the practice did not continue promising the original scope simply to preserve pipeline confidence.

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 10 October 2026. Mandate reference PCT-INT-2026-IND-10.