Technology-Debt Capital Recovery Leader

The mandate

A resilience review showed that valuation, scheduling and settlement processes depend on ageing services whose true support costs sit in overtime, vendor concessions and trader-maintained spreadsheets rather than technology budgets. Meanwhile, visible modernisation projects compete on optimistic revenue benefits. The portfolio head has been removed after three emergency funding requests, creating an immediate executive gap before annual capital is locked and seasonal market volatility raises the cost of platform failure.

During eleven months, the interim leader will establish an economic register of technology debt tied to trading capabilities, operational loss paths and future-option constraints. That evidence must reshape the active portfolio: protect critical remediation, stop cosmetically modern projects, expose dependency-driven sequence and fund retirement rather than perpetual coexistence. The work must respect model governance, market conduct, financial controls and the speed requirements of live physical and financial trading.

The company expects a permanent portfolio and architecture executive to be appointed by month seven. The successor will own the second capital reallocation and defend a major retirement choice to traders, finance and risk before handover. Transfer includes the debt register, benefit baselines, decision history, vendor positions and observed leadership feedback, with the interim executive available only for a defined thirty-day knowledge close after formal accountability moves.

This leader can freeze approved discretionary work, move capital inside committee thresholds, require cost and dependency evidence, appoint accountable debt owners, set retirement gates and reject business cases that omit coexistence expense. The seat cannot alter trading limits, approve valuation models, accept regulatory exposure, sign supplier agreements, close a production service or exceed board capital. Named officers preserve those reserved decisions.

The remit excludes operating trading desks, becoming chief architect, conducting model validation or managing daily production incidents. Success is demonstrated by funded retirement sequences, fewer emergency allocations, traceable capability economics and a successor able to continue hard choices despite desk pressure. The debt register must not become a larger technical inventory detached from loss, strategic constraint and named investment action.

Why this seat is open

The removed leader managed projects as separate funding promises and could not explain why apparent delivery increased both run cost and operational fragility. Emergency asks damaged confidence just before the annual allocation round. The chief operating officer needs temporary decision authority that can confront attractive new features, quantify neglected dependencies and install a successor into an evidence-rich capital process rather than an inherited contest of anecdotes.

What you will own

• Build a technology-debt register linked to trading capability, loss scenario, operational workaround, dependency and economic consequence.
• Reconstruct fully burdened costs across vendor support, incident labour, duplicate platforms, manual control, delay and constrained change.
• Re-rank active investments using resilience, regulatory exposure, strategic optionality, retirement feasibility and credible benefit evidence.
• Stop, reshape or sequence programmes whose apparent value depends on unpriced coexistence or unresolved critical-platform debt.
• Define retirement gates covering functional substitution, valuation reconciliation, operational readiness, data retention and rollback confidence.
• Chair monthly portfolio choices with transparent dissent, accountable risk acceptance and separate treatment of reversible experiments.
• Handover capital baselines, decision records, debt ownership, vendor constraints and the next two committee agendas to the successor.

Candidate qualifications

• Has redirected a large technology portfolio after hidden debt and coexistence economics invalidated approved investment priorities.
• Understands energy trading dependencies across market data, valuation, scheduling, confirmations, collateral, settlement and financial control.
• Can quantify operational fragility and constrained optionality without inventing false precision or scoring every ageing component identically.
• Has stopped sponsor-backed modernisation work when dependency evidence showed that promised benefits could not be realised safely.
• Brings live retirement governance for critical services, including reconciliation, operational proof, rollback and accountable residual-risk decisions.
• Has developed a permanent executive through contested capital allocation rather than transferring only a taxonomy and presentation deck.

Non-negotiables

• Will work onsite in Houston and attend the agreed trading-floor reviews and quarterly capital-allocation meetings.
• Must declare relationships with commodity traders, exchanges, market-data providers, platform vendors, integrators and investment sponsors.
• Brings technology capital accountability in trading or similarly time-critical regulated operations; cost optimisation alone is insufficient.
• Will expose sunk-cost and sponsor bias rather than preserving projects to protect prior executive commitments.

1. 49 words maximum. Which hidden cost most often changes the economics of carrying a critical trading platform?
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a modernisation investment you stopped because its dependency assumptions were untrue.
3. 49 words maximum. What retirement evidence would you insist on before a valuation service is decommissioned?