EVP – Risk and Resilience — Speciality-Materials Portfolio

The mandate

The portfolio is introducing advanced process control, automated dosing, robotics, machine vision and connected maintenance across speciality-materials plants. The EVP must ensure automation changes are assessed for process risk, OT cyber resilience and business continuity before production relies on them.

The remit influences approximately 1,950 employees and material partners through enterprise risk, process-safety assurance, resilience, OT risk, third-party control and crisis governance. Plant managers remain accountable for safe operation; engineering owns design; cyber specialists own standards. The EVP provides independent challenge, sets assurance and escalates readiness to the executive committee and relevant board forum.

Automation can improve consistency and remove hazardous exposure, but it creates common-mode failure, model, sensor, power and communications dependencies. Operators may lose practice in manual control. The risk leader must examine the full safety function, degraded modes and recovery, not merely certify that a vendor test passed.

Resilience extends to raw materials, utilities, laboratories, specialist maintenance and customer supply. Increased plant interconnection can spread a defect or cyber event more widely. The appointee will define segmentation, crisis authority and recovery priorities based on process and customer criticality.

Emergency readiness includes communities and public responders beyond the fence line. Automation can change credible release, fire and utility-failure scenarios, which in turn affect alarms, muster, mutual aid and communication. The EVP will ensure emergency plans and external information reflect the modified plant, conduct joint exercises and close findings with evidence accessible to people working every shift.

Insurance and contractual risk should follow the new exposure. Policy wording, cyber exclusions, machinery breakdown, business interruption periods and customer liability may not match interconnected automated operations. The risk leader will test coverage and claims evidence, but will never treat insurance as a substitute for prevention or recovery capability.

Why this seat is open

The hazard review made an unplanned executive role urgent. Existing safety and cyber leaders are capable but report through different lines and cannot provide integrated independent assurance. The board paused high-risk commissioning gates until a designated executive can verify closure and ongoing ownership.

What you will own

• Establish automation risk standards spanning process hazard, functional safety, OT cyber, data, human factors and recovery.
• Provide independent readiness opinions at design, test, commissioning and stable-operation gates.
• Test degraded and manual modes, alarm design, operator competence and safeguard independence.
• Govern vendor remote access, software provenance, patching, support and obsolescence.
• Map common-mode dependencies across plants, utilities, laboratories and shared technology.
• Lead realistic crisis and recovery exercises involving operations, engineering and customers.
• Track corrective actions to independent evidence and prevent administrative closure.
• Build integrated risk leadership while preserving plant accountability.

The first 12 months

In 90 days, review all high-risk automation cases, sample hazard actions and observe the recent concern in the field. Establish interim commissioning criteria and identify safeguards whose assumptions no longer match staffing or design. Present a portfolio risk and resilience map with decisions requiring delay, redesign or added protection.

By month six, complete independent assurance of first-wave systems, run a combined process-and-cyber exercise and implement vendor-access controls. Certify operator and maintenance competence through observed degraded-mode work. Revisit business continuity for shared utilities and critical customer grades.

At twelve months, commission only systems meeting the integrated gate, close 90% of high-risk findings by evidence and demonstrate safe recovery in two independent scenarios. Critical OT remote access should be fully controlled and monitored; repeat alarm or safeguard failures should fall by 50%; and no serious event should arise from an automation change with a known unresolved critical risk.

What the board will measure

• Independent readiness decisions that change or delay unsafe commissioning.
• Process-safety, cyber and human-factor assumptions aligned in one risk case.
• Degraded operation and recovery proven rather than documented abstractly.
• Vendor and common-mode dependency understood and mitigated.
• Plant accountability for actions after central assurance.
• Crisis leadership and transparent escalation of residual risk.

The person

You have 22–28 years in risk, process safety, operations or resilience across chemicals, materials, pharmaceuticals, energy or another hazardous manufacturing environment. You have governed automated control change and personally challenged commissioning when the technical case was incomplete.

Your experience includes at least ₹3,500 crore of assets or operations and 1,300 employees and partners. You can explain a safeguard assumption you overturned, a cyber or utility scenario you tested and how line management accepted residual risk. Board communication and field credibility are both essential.

The onsite Hyderabad role requires extensive plant travel and reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive sponsor.

Compensation and terms

The fixed range is ₹2.2–3.0 crore plus performance variable measured through risk reduction, safe commissioning, resilience, vendor control and leadership. This permanent onsite Hyderabad role reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated sponsor and requires regular plant presence. Notice up to six months can be considered against paused commissioning gates.

Confidentiality

The portfolio, plants, processes, hazard findings and vendors remain restricted. Detailed access follows role fit, security and conflict review and a mutual undertaking. Circumstances and scale are intentionally composite; candidates must not contact regulators, suppliers or employees to identify the organisation.