Confidential mandate
Adviser to Chief Technology Officer — Industrial IoT Platform
Planned Hiring / New
A diversified manufacturer wants a CTO adviser to help decide whether its connected-factory platform should remain valuable internal infrastructure or become a commercially supported external product.
The mandate
The executive committee cannot agree whether its factory-data platform has defensible external value or is a useful internal integration layer. External pilots create excitement, but support, security and product-management obligations remain uncosted.
Two days monthly cover an architecture-product clinic and Digital Investment Committee attendance. A partner proposal or product-investment pack receives acknowledgement within two days and a response inside five business days.
The nine-month term ends at the productisation decision and associated capital gate. One three-month renewal is available by committee vote; the adviser has no line authority, product P&L, sales mandate or executive responsibility.
Up to three appointments may coexist outside direct industrial-IoT competitors. Relationships with automation vendors, cloud providers, systems integrators or prospective channel partners require disclosure, and reseller economics are incompatible.
Why the board wants this voice
Plant teams value reliability, digital teams value reuse and commercial leaders see an adjacent market. None has carried an industrial platform through product support and external cyber obligations. The committee wants impartial pressure on whether this is truly a business.
What you will own
- Test external use cases for repeatability beyond the manufacturer's own equipment and process context.
- Challenge architecture boundaries across edge collection, data models, analytics, applications and integrations.
- Press leaders to quantify deployment, support, cybersecurity and upgrade costs per customer.
- Shape product criteria for portability, configurability, observability and lifecycle commitments.
- Examine channel proposals for customer ownership and technical-accountability gaps.
- Guide evidence thresholds for moving from paid pilot to generally supported offer.
- Advise when internal platform value should take precedence over external commercial ambition.
Candidate qualifications
- 22–28 years in industrial technology, manufacturing digitalisation or platform-product leadership.
- Direct experience commercialising an industrial-IoT or operational-technology software product.
- Evidence of owning lifecycle support, cybersecurity and deployment economics beyond pilot.
- Fluency in edge architectures, industrial protocols, semantic models and plant change control.
- Executive-committee experience terminating or narrowing an adjacent technology venture.
- Independence from suppliers and channels likely to benefit from the recommendation.
Non-negotiables
- Two Ahmedabad days monthly through the productisation decision.
- No reseller, referral or implementation income linked to platform choices.
- Disclosure of industrial-software, cloud, automation and integrator interests.
- Five-business-day response on complete investment or partner papers.
- 49 words maximum. Which industrial platform did you take from internal capability to supported product, and what proved repeatability?
- 49 words maximum. Which cloud, automation, integration or channel relationships could conflict with this advice?
- 49 words maximum. Can you protect two monthly Ahmedabad days through the nine-month productisation decision?
This mandate is confidential. The client is named only under a mutual NDA, and your own record is never listed, sold or shown to a company under your name until you release it for this specific mandate.