Interim Chief Digital Officer — Retail Bank Platform Recovery

The mandate

The bank is advancing a mobile-banking platform that requires senior product leadership to make architectural and go-to-market decisions. Product tribes are continuing essential development work, but no executive presently owns the choice between evolving the current stack and phasing the launch around specific customer cohorts.

The successful interim must start within three weeks and hold the seat for nine months. A permanent CDO search will run from month two, with overlap planned for the final six weeks; an extension is possible only if the successor's notice period crosses the agreed transition date.

Handover is complete when the relaunch has passed two consecutive release gates, 70% of active retail customers have migrated without deterioration in complaint or fraud rates, the remaining roadmap is funded, and the permanent appointee has chaired one full digital investment review. Those outcomes, rather than elapsed time, define the end of the assignment.

The interim may re-sequence the approved ₹180 crore portfolio, stop releases that fail risk gates, replace vendors within existing commercial ceilings and appoint temporary programme leads. New capital above ₹25 crore, closure of a customer channel and any permanent executive hire require board approval; the interim may not alter regulated account terms.

Core-banking replacement, branch-network redesign and the bank's wholesale digital proposition are outside scope. The brief is deliberately confined to retail journeys, migration control and restoration of a dependable product operating cadence.

Why this seat is open

The previous CDO resigned after the release pause exposed unresolved accountability between product, technology and operations. The board chose not to rush a permanent appointment while the recovery path remains contested. It wants an experienced operator to stabilise the facts, execute the reset and leave a governable platform for the next leader.

What you will own

• Decide the minimum safe relaunch scope and submit the supporting customer, control and economic evidence to the Technology Committee.
• Rebuild the release-control scorecard covering defect escape, fraud exposure, service capacity, journey completion and rollback readiness.
• Reallocate the digital portfolio budget against customer migration value and close initiatives that cannot clear an agreed twelve-month benefit threshold.
• Establish a single product-and-engineering command rhythm with named decisions, dependency owners and forty-eight-hour escalation rules.
• Negotiate revised recovery obligations with the platform integrator and document the service credits, acceptance tests and exit protections.
• Approve each migration wave after independent operational-risk challenge and publish a board-ready account of exceptions and customer outcomes.
• Transfer the funded roadmap, vendor decisions, talent assessment and unresolved risk register to the permanent CDO through a six-week induction dossier.

Candidate qualifications

• Led a regulated bank's digital business or product portfolio at C-suite or enterprise director level through a material platform recovery.
• Personally governed a mobile migration exceeding five million active customers, including fraud, conduct, service and rollback decisions.
• Demonstrated command of Indian retail-banking regulation, digital consent, outsourcing controls and board technology governance.
• Recovered a large product-engineering portfolio by terminating low-value work and resetting vendor accountability against measurable release gates.
• Managed senior product, design, analytics and technology leaders across Mumbai and Bengaluru with direct budget authority.
• Can evidence a clean handover to a permanent successor rather than relying on an open-ended transformation mandate.