Commercial Forecasting and Demand Conversion Senior Director

The mandate

The Senior Director will own the financial translation of commercial intent into an evidence-based demand outlook. Pipeline, commitments, recurring activity and market assumptions currently enter planning with different confidence language and time conventions. The result can be a precise aggregate unsupported by an equally precise account of conversion and timing risk.

This permanent role will create a staged conversion model that distinguishes observed demand, qualified opportunity, contracted value, delivery constraint, cancellation risk and realised revenue. It must reconcile to reported performance while allowing local evidence to remain visible rather than being lost inside a centrally imposed conversion rate.

Authority includes setting forecast evidence standards, defining confidence categories and returning submissions whose timing or value cannot be supported. Commercial teams continue to own relationship and proposition decisions; operating teams own fulfilment. The Senior Director owns whether those decisions have been represented faithfully in financial planning.

The first-year progression moves from definition and baseline to calibration, then to decision use. Success means fewer late forecast movements, earlier identification of conversion bottlenecks and documented management action when leading indicators change. A strong internal team and a bilingual governance rhythm are essential elements of durability.

What you will own

• Define mutually exclusive demand stages with entry, exit, evidence, value and timing rules accepted by finance and commercial owners.
• Build conversion cohorts that separate movement caused by qualification, slippage, cancellation, capacity and value revision.
• Calibrate confidence ranges against observed outcomes without treating short history or sparse cohorts as statistically conclusive.
• Establish a weekly exception view for material opportunities and a monthly aggregate forecast whose figures reconcile without hidden overlays.
• Introduce leading indicators that trigger operating or commercial review before financial underperformance becomes irreversible.
• Approve local judgement adjustments only when their evidence, owner, duration and subsequent accuracy are recorded.
• Create executive bridges from opening demand to delivered financial result, with responsibility assigned for each lost or delayed conversion.
• Develop finance partners who can challenge pipeline optimism constructively in Japanese and cross-border leadership settings.

Candidate qualifications

• Fifteen or more years in commercial FP&A, demand forecasting or revenue planning, including regional Director responsibility.
• Proof of building a staged conversion forecast and improving decision lead time, with error measures separated by cause.
• Strong technical understanding of cohort conversion, time-to-event, confidence ranges, seasonality, constraint effects and reconciliation to financial results.
• Evidence of handling local qualitative knowledge without permitting unrecorded overrides to defeat model governance.
• Experience influencing senior commercial owners while keeping customer-facing accountability and forecast-quality authority distinct.
• Demonstrated leadership across Japanese and international working cultures, with professional fluency sufficient for executive challenge.
• A history of developing finance partners whose analysis led to action on demand quality, capacity or timing.

Working terms and boundaries

• The role is permanent, with first-year checkpoints after stage definition, first calibration, first executive use and the annual accuracy review.
• Forecast evidence and release standards fall within scope; commercial commitments, fulfilment priorities and relationship decisions remain elsewhere.
• Hybrid presence is expected for weekly exception forums and monthly forecast sign-off, with planned regional travel during calibration.
• The model must preserve confidence ranges and local evidence; forced certainty or undisclosed central adjustments are prohibited.
• Year-one completion requires operating cohorts, reconciled bridges, leading-action records and a capable internal successor bench.

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 9 October 2026. Mandate reference FPA-PER-2026-TYO-13.