GCC AI Engineering Launch Leader

The mandate

The executive hired to establish the Hyderabad GCC withdrew for personal reasons six weeks before the first 45 offers and two product transfers were due to begin. Corporate functions can complete leases and payroll, but the global CTO lacks an India-based leader who can turn capacity hiring into accountable AI product engineering.

The interim must join within eighteen days and lead the centre for fifteen months. A permanent site-head search opens after the first two transferred product increments reach customer release, with a six-week overlap planned so the successor can chair workforce, architecture and global portfolio forums before taking the seat.

Handover requires at least 160 accepted hires against an approved skills pyramid, three AI product squads owning production outcomes rather than tickets, operational model and data release gates, attrition and inclusion inside agreed corridors, and the permanent leader's signed acceptance of the next two-quarter plan. Headcount attainment alone will not constitute success.

The appointee may finalise team topology, approve hiring within sanctioned bands, select temporary launch partners, stop transfers that lack product ownership and reallocate the authorised site budget. Changes to legal-entity scope, permanent executive appointments, capital above ₹15 crore and closure of a global product team need steering-committee approval; the interim cannot promise offshore savings not supported by the operating case.

Enterprise ERP, India sales, non-AI shared services and the group's wider location strategy are outside the mandate. The remit is the Hyderabad AI engineering centre, its product interfaces, leadership bench, release controls and credible integration into global research and commercial teams.

Why this seat is open

The nominated launch leader withdrew after facilities and recruiting commitments had already started. Delaying the launch would strand accepted candidates and disrupt two product roadmaps, while promoting a global product head would leave another critical vacancy. A temporary GCC builder is therefore needed to convert a calendar-driven setup into an owned engineering operation.

What you will own

• Redesign the launch sequence around product accountabilities, scarce skills, leadership spans and dependencies rather than recruiter throughput.
• Approve the India organisation, role scorecards, interview bars and compensation exceptions inside the sanctioned workforce envelope.
• Negotiate transfer contracts with global product leaders covering outcomes, architecture authority, model risk, data access and escalation rights.
• Establish production gates for training data, evaluation, deployment, observability, rollback and accountable human intervention.
• Decide whether capability gaps are hired, developed, borrowed or temporarily partnered, with expiry dates for every external dependency.
• Create a centre scorecard linking hiring and retention to release quality, engineering flow, product adoption and global stakeholder trust.
• Transfer the talent map, product commitments, budget, governance calendar and unresolved cross-border decisions through three successor-led forums.

Candidate qualifications

• Built an Indian GCC or major product-engineering centre from initial hiring through stable production ownership at comparable scale.
• Led applied AI, data and MLOps teams whose models operated inside industrial, enterprise or safety-relevant customer workflows.
• Converted global work transfer into end-to-end product accountability with explicit architecture and release decision rights.
• Hired and calibrated senior engineering managers in Hyderabad while controlling compensation exceptions, leadership spans and early attrition.
• Negotiated operating boundaries with European or North American product executives and resolved resistance to transferring meaningful ownership.
• Handed a launched centre to a permanent site leader with measured performance, documented risks and functioning cross-border governance.

Non-negotiables

• Can begin in Hyderabad within eighteen days and work on site five days weekly through the first four months.
• Available for quarterly travel to the designated European product centres and for recurring cross-time-zone executive forums.
• Brings direct greenfield GCC launch accountability; scaling an established offshore delivery unit alone is insufficient.
• Will not accept undisclosed search-firm, staffing-vendor or implementation-partner incentives connected to launch decisions.

1. 49 words maximum. State your earliest Hyderabad start date and any commitment that would prevent exclusive launch leadership for fifteen months.
2. 49 words maximum. Which product outcome did your last new GCC own by month twelve, and what authority had to move for that to happen?
3. 49 words maximum. Describe one early hiring metric you deliberately slowed because it threatened the centre's long-term operating quality.