GCC Talent Market-Entry Leader — Climate Analytics

The mandate

The executive appointed to launch the India capability centre resigned weeks before the first engineering cohorts were due to join, after the global plan expanded from support roles into climate science, geospatial AI and platform reliability. Property and entity work continues, but workforce demand lacks a skill taxonomy, recruiting partners are working to conflicting scorecards, and no executive presently owns talent quality, people operations and global-leader adoption together.

The interim must begin within three weeks and lead the Bengaluru people build for fifteen months, working onsite four days and remotely one day each week, with monthly London sponsor sessions and targeted Hyderabad market visits. Search for a permanent India people leader begins after the first 500 employees reach ninety-day tenure, allowing a planned six-week overlap near the end. An extension is possible only if the final specialist cohort shifts for business reasons.

Handover is complete when 1,100 employees are productively onboarded, quality-of-hire and regretted-attrition measures remain within Steering Committee thresholds for two quarters, critical scientific and engineering skills have sustainable pipelines, people services meet published service levels, and the successor has chaired one workforce-plan and one talent-review cycle. Gross hiring volume without capability and retention evidence will not count.

The leader may set sourcing and assessment standards, select recruiting vendors inside the approved envelope, stop requisitions without calibrated demand, appoint temporary functional leads and approve offers within board bands. Any permanent vice-president appointment, equity exception, site expansion, workforce reduction or people-system investment above ₹4 crore needs committee approval; the interim cannot change global job architecture or employment-law policy unilaterally.

Real-estate delivery, legal entity formation, product-roadmap ownership and global HRIS replacement are excluded. The appointee will challenge role demand and ensure immigration, payroll and workplace dependencies are ready, but will not act as facilities director, engineering head or company secretary. The mandate concerns a durable talent and people operating engine, not ownership of the entire GCC programme.

Why this seat is open

The planned launch leader left when scale and skill complexity moved beyond the original shared-services brief. Global executives are continuing to send demand, yet local teams lack one authority to arbitrate quality, cost and sequence. The company needs temporary leadership that can make the launch real, develop an Indian successor and exit after the operating model survives at scale.

What you will own

• Convert the business plan into a quarter-by-quarter workforce architecture showing skills, levels, locations, build-versus-buy choices, dependencies and accountable global sponsors.
• Decide assessment standards for geospatial AI, data engineering, climate science, platform reliability and product operations using validated work samples and interviewer calibration.
• Select and govern recruiting partners through cohort quality, representation, acceptance, joining, early attrition and cost rather than résumé volume.
• Build the offer, pre-boarding, payroll, mobility, employee-relations and induction controls required before each growth wave is authorised.
• Establish a ninety-day quality-of-hire review that links hiring evidence to manager assessment, productivity, retention and remediation for weak selection channels.
• Chair monthly demand arbitration with global leaders, stopping unapproved substitutions and recording changes to cost, skill mix and delivery outcomes.
• Transfer the workforce model, vendor portfolio, talent maps, leadership bench, control calendar and unresolved risks through two successor-led governance cycles.

Candidate qualifications

• Held India GCC people head, talent director or enterprise workforce leader authority while building a technology centre beyond 800 employees.
• Can evidence successful hiring of scarce engineering, data, scientific or cyber capabilities using quality and retention measures beyond time-to-fill.
• Designed a workforce plan tied to global product or platform outcomes and personally challenged senior sponsors whose demand lacked role clarity or funding.
• Built India people operations, assessment governance, vendor controls and leadership routines early enough to support multiple rapid hiring waves.
• Managed talent-market choices across Bengaluru and Hyderabad, including compensation pressure, notice periods, employer positioning and specialist-community access.
• Developed and handed authority to a permanent India leader after launch, with operating metrics remaining stable through at least one later planning cycle.

Non-negotiables

• Able to start within three weeks and sustain four Bengaluru onsite days plus the stated Hyderabad and London cadence.
• Free of material interests in recruiting vendors, assessment platforms, staffing firms or competing GCC launch mandates.
• Will challenge and pause global hiring demand that lacks funded, calibrated or operationally ready roles.
• Has held director or CXO-level India people authority for an actual GCC build, not only advised one from headquarters.

1. 49 words maximum. Confirm your earliest start date and the largest specialist GCC cohort you have personally taken through ninety-day review.
2. 49 words maximum. Which quality-of-hire measure changed a sourcing or assessment decision in your last centre build?
3. 49 words maximum. Describe one global demand request you stopped and the evidence that justified the pause.