Finance Director — Automotive Programme Lifetime Profitability

The mandate

An automotive components business is winning multi-year customer programmes whose launch cases no longer predict the economics realised during serial production. Volume revisions, tooling recovery and delayed price adjustments have different effects, yet management often explains them through one monthly margin variance. The Finance Director will establish ongoing financial ownership of programme lifetime returns across three manufacturing plants.

The Director joins through permanent, open-ended employment, beginning with a twenty-four-month programme of bid-to-series financial continuity, commercial recovery and disciplined review. The first year establishes a comparable view of accepted economics and changed assumptions; the second embeds decisions at customer renewals and production transitions. Responsibility continues through the programme portfolio rather than ending when a launch budget is approved or a plant reaches its production target.

The central question is what the business has actually agreed to recover and under which conditions. Tooling charges may be contingent on volumes never achieved, while contractual price mechanisms can lag a material or energy change. Production teams may improve conversion cost without offsetting the lost economics of a reduced customer schedule. Finance must separate those effects and identify a commercial decision before their combined impact is treated as an inevitable factory performance issue.

The Director sets programme finance standards and controls financial concurrence on customer proposals within the business delegation. Material pricing concessions, exceptional capital expenditure and commitments extending beyond approved risk tolerances require the Chief Executive or group investment authority. Engineering validates tooling requirements and production capability; commercial and legal owners establish enforceable customer rights. Finance quantifies their consequences and does not certify technical feasibility or independently amend customer contracts.

An effective first-year review will reconcile current programme expectations to the original authorised case and expose the unrecovered investment remaining under credible demand scenarios. By twenty-four months, pricing, tooling and end-of-programme choices should use that evidence consistently. The enduring team will retain financial accountability from nomination to runoff, enabling manufacturing and commercial leaders to see whether an attractive monthly result is protecting or eroding the full programme return.

What you will own

• Establish a programme lifetime ledger linking authorised investment, agreed recovery terms and revised production expectations, exposing the remaining financial commitment after a customer changes its serial schedule.
• Decide the financial evidence required for tooling recovery assumptions, separating unconditional customer payments, volume-dependent amortisation and residual investment that the business may have to fund itself.
• Govern price-adjustment analysis through agreed mechanisms and documented timing, quantifying the cost of delayed recovery before commercial leaders accept another apparently neutral contract amendment.
• Reconcile programme profitability changes into volume, product mix, conversion performance and commercial recovery effects, preventing a plant from being assigned an unexplained loss arising outside its operating responsibility.
• Challenge bid and renewal cases with credible lower-volume scenarios, identifying the investment or pricing conditions necessary before the business can safely commit its scarce manufacturing capacity.
• Build end-of-programme finance reviews covering residual tooling, inventory and customer obligations, coordinating specialist evidence so runoff decisions do not leave unsupported assets or unprovided commitments.
• Develop plant and programme finance leaders through joint commercial reviews, ensuring they can trace a return change to its decision owner and sustain constructive challenge across organisational boundaries.

Candidate qualifications

• Extensive manufacturing finance leadership, preferably in automotive or another customer-programme production environment, must include responsibility beyond one plant's monthly reporting. Describe a programme whose lifetime return changed after launch, explaining how you separated customer volume, tooling recovery and controllable production effects and what commercial or investment decision followed your analysis.
• Bring deep financial controlling and commercial planning judgement across tooling, product transitions and multi-year customer arrangements. Relevant examples should show your ability to test a recovery assumption against documented terms and credible operating schedules. Explain a case where positive unit contribution concealed an unrecovered investment or a price mechanism whose timing materially weakened the programme economics.
• Demonstrate strong accounting and audit discipline alongside business profitability work. You should reconcile programme models to reported assets, costs and approved estimates, obtaining specialist contractual or engineering evidence where needed. Provide a contested residual-asset or runoff judgement, the evidence inspected and the approval route used to keep financial reporting consistent with the programme decision.
• Establish a record of developing experienced controllers and influencing manufacturing and commercial executives. This appointment requires senior responsibility for the finance position presented at programme gates, not merely preparing the calculation. Explain an unpopular recommendation you maintained, how the authorised decision was recorded and how subsequent operating evidence was used to reassess its financial consequences.

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 14 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-055.