Interim Chief Information Officer — Core Banking Cutover

The mandate

An unexpected medical leave has removed the CIO six weeks before the final rehearsal for a core-banking conversion affecting deposits, lending and payments. Technical workstreams remain staffed, yet the programme lacks one executive empowered to adjudicate readiness disputes between operations, risk and the system integrator.

The interim must join within ten working days and cover an eight-month window spanning rehearsal, conversion, hypercare and the first quarter-end. The incumbent is expected to return; there is no permanent search and the closing month is reserved for a documented handback rather than role conversion.

The assignment is finished when the cutover meets agreed reconciliation and availability thresholds, high-severity hypercare defects are closed, disaster recovery has been proven from the new environment, and the returning CIO has accepted the technology-control and vendor position. A go-live declaration by itself is insufficient.

The interim can approve build-to-run transitions, stop the cutover, invoke supplier remedies and move up to ₹15 crore inside the authorised programme envelope. The board must approve a go-live against any red risk, a date shift exceeding thirty days, incremental spend above that delegation or material de-scoping; permanent organisation changes are prohibited.

Digital-channel redesign, data-warehouse modernisation and renegotiation of unrelated infrastructure contracts are not part of the seat. The interim will protect dependencies but cannot allow the conversion window to become a general technology clean-up.

Why this seat is open

The CIO's leave began too close to conversion for the executive team to redistribute accountability safely. Programme directors can manage plans but cannot carry the board's go/no-go decision. A fixed cover preserves authority through hypercare and returns a stable estate to the incumbent.

What you will own

• Define the evidence pack for each cutover gate and reject readiness assertions that cannot be traced to signed test results.
• Decide the final migration sequence, blackout controls and rollback triggers with explicit customer and liquidity tolerances.
• Chair daily cross-functional readiness decisions and record dissent, accepted residual risk and owners for every waiver.
• Authorise go-live or stop the event within delegated risk limits and escalate any red-risk override to the board.
• Enforce integrator recovery obligations through defect burn-down, key-person continuity, service credits and acceptance holdbacks.
• Prove production resilience through a live failover exercise, reconciled recovery-point evidence and accountable runbooks.
• Return the platform through an indexed handback covering architecture debt, vendor claims, access exceptions, capacity forecasts and ninety-day priorities.

Candidate qualifications

• Served as bank CIO, technology COO or core-platform programme director with enterprise go-live authority.
• Personally led at least one multi-product core-banking conversion through reconciliation, hypercare and disaster-recovery proof.
• Made documented stop-or-proceed decisions under board scrutiny rather than operating only as a delivery adviser.
• Understands Indian banking technology, cyber, outsourcing and business-continuity control expectations.
• Directed blended internal and integrator teams exceeding 400 people across application and infrastructure domains.
• Can provide evidence of returning an executive seat cleanly after temporary incumbent absence.

Non-negotiables

• Available in Pune within ten working days and present throughout rehearsal and conversion weekends.
• No current engagement with the core-platform vendor, prime integrator or independent test partner.
• Will sign the go/no-go recommendation and accept recorded challenge from Risk and Operations.
• Cannot seek permanent conversion because the mandate is explicit incumbent cover.

1. 49 words maximum. Confirm your earliest Pune start and every date you cannot be present during the planned cutover window.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a core conversion you stopped or delayed, including the failed evidence and resulting customer protection.
3. 49 words maximum. Which reconciliation threshold must remain non-waivable during a deposit migration?