Interim Chief Product Officer — HR Technology Payroll Recovery

The mandate

The business operates a payroll engine serving several enterprise clients and needs to strengthen calculation controls, release assurance and roadmap delivery. Product, engineering and payroll operations require one accountable owner to govern calculation safety and restore product discipline.

The interim must start within two weeks for a fixed eight-month term, covering correction, two payroll cycles and permanent succession. Recruitment begins after the revised calculation-control framework is accepted, with five weeks reserved for transfer.

Handover is complete when every affected employee has a verified correction, two payroll cycles close within calculation and filing tolerance, rule changes pass independent regression, client confidence plans are accepted, and the successor approves one statutory update release.

The interim may stop releases, prioritise the ₹8 crore remediation roadmap, require manual client approval and suspend risky configurations. Aggregate employee or client redress above ₹5 crore, permanent leadership hires, pricing changes, new-country payroll and replacement of the calculation engine require CEO or board approval.

Talent acquisition, performance management and employer HR policy are outside scope. The product seat owns payroll calculation and workflow evidence without assuming client employment decisions.

Why this seat is open

The release failure exposed product governance that treated payroll rules like ordinary features. Existing leaders own the engine, implementation or operations component and cannot independently certify the whole pay result. A temporary CPO can restore domain-led release control before permanent roadmap leadership resumes.

What you will own

• Bound affected employees and clients by rule version, configuration, pay period, statutory context and payment outcome.
• Decide correction and communication paths using employee harm, payroll timing and client approval.
• Build versioned payroll rule governance with domain ownership, effective dates, dependencies and retirement criteria.
• Set regression suites across normal, arrears, reversal, leave, exit, deduction and statutory boundary scenarios.
• Approve release only after calculation, filing, payment, reconciliation and client-readiness evidence passes.
• Demonstrate two payroll cycles within agreed defect and statutory thresholds.
• Transfer rule inventory, client corrections, test evidence, product debt and the next statutory calendar to the permanent CPO.

Candidate qualifications

• Led product for payroll, workforce management, HR technology or another high-consequence calculation platform.
• Recovered a payroll or financial calculation defect affecting enterprise customers and individuals.
• Established versioned domain rules and effective-date regression across configurable products.
• Balanced urgent correction, client communication and statutory filing deadlines.
• Directed product, domain, design and operations teams through a release-control rebuild.
• Understands Indian payroll deductions, arrears, exits and statutory calendar complexity.