Industrial OT Cybersecurity Practice Leadership — Interim Head

The mandate

The interim will hold the OT security practice seat, preserving safe methods and defensible recommendations across industrial environments. The scope concerns practice leadership and delivery quality, not permission to operate a customer's plant or claim enterprise CISO authority.

Starting on 19 October 2026, the bridge lasts twelve months while a permanent practice head is recruited. Mumbai is the primary base, with industrial-site visits governed by written access and safety permissions. The opening phase reviews current assessment methods and delivery commitments; the final quarter requires the successor to lead a safe-scope review and a completed architecture challenge.

At handover, OT assessment scope, visibility limitations and recommendation acceptance must be traceable to approved evidence. The successor must distinguish a defensible industrial risk finding from a potentially unsafe test request and operate one delivery review without informal authorisation. Open technical dependencies must carry client-safe communication and the correct retained plant or service owner.

Delegation allows prioritising practice work, directing existing technical leads and approving budgeted delivery costs up to ₹20 lakh. Binding client commitments, permanent hiring and material commercial departures remain with the services executive. Active testing, production changes and remote-access activation require the customer's authorised plant and security owners; the interim cannot grant those rights through practice leadership alone.

The assignment excludes plant engineering sign-off, equipment control and unapproved offensive activity. Industry frameworks inform risk judgement but do not constitute a compliance guarantee. Five days weekly are covered by the proposed day rate, with separately approved exceptional travel. Any extension must identify an unfinished practice leadership gap and a definite successor transfer rather than indefinite delivery support.

What you will own

• Establish the OT engagement decision register linking written authorisation, plant safety conditions and assessment method before delivery teams accept technical scope or promise customer-specific testing outcomes.
• Decide practice priorities through industrial exposure and delivery evidence, rejecting activities whose visibility benefit cannot justify operational risk or whose authorisation remains incomplete.
• Direct architecture and assessment reviews against recognised OT risk principles, preserving the difference between advisory recommendation and a production change approved by the customer's plant owner.
• Approve budgeted practice delivery costs within delegation, retaining technical dependencies and safe-access conditions rather than allowing commercial urgency to erase the original assessment boundary.
• Challenge OT visibility findings with passive evidence and specialist review, identifying where absence of observation cannot legitimately be interpreted as absence of industrial cyber exposure.
• Escalate unsafe requests and unsupported assurance claims to the services executive, documenting alternatives that remain inside customer authorisation and the practice's actual competence.
• Transfer practice judgement through successor-led safe-scope reviews, architecture challenges and an accepted register of open access, evidence and customer-owned production decisions.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate head-level OT/ICS security practice, delivery or equivalent industrial cybersecurity leadership. Provide a scope decision personally refused or constrained for safety and identify the customer's retained authority. Explain the approved passive or controlled alternative, the engineering evidence relied upon and how practice reviewers prevented the original unsafe request from returning through commercial escalation.
• Show practical understanding of OT visibility, segmentation, remote access and industrial architecture through a redacted assessment or design case. Explain how recognised OT frameworks informed judgement and where their application required contextual engineering input. Candidates must distinguish safe passive observation from active testing and recognise when equipment vendors or plant specialists must decide.
• Evidence technical-commercial judgement in a service practice, including a commitment repriced, delayed or rejected because authorisation or delivery assumptions were inadequate. Show how the decision was communicated without overstating assurance. Certifications are relevant only alongside practical industrial evidence, and no particular customer's technology stack, site scale or operating process is prescribed.
• Provide a tested successor or delivery-method transfer with access conditions, evidence limitations and production decision boundaries preserved. Mature practice leadership must include quality challenge, confidentiality and safe escalation across concurrent work. Show a successor-led scope review that routed an active-test request to the authorised plant owner and offered a defensible evidence alternative while permission remained outstanding.

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 PCT-INT-2026-IND-30.