People Data Residency Recovery Authority — Cloud Support Services

The mandate

An audit traced employee identity, case and performance extracts into analytics sandboxes, vendor support environments and backup regions outside approved data paths. System owners know their applications but not downstream replicas, regional notices describe intended processing rather than actual movement, and deletion requests do not propagate reliably. The people-data leader was removed when remediation ownership remained fragmented across Privacy, Security and HR technology.

The nine-month assignment begins within ten days and covers authoritative discovery, jurisdiction decisions supplied by counsel, containment, four failure exercises, controlled remediation and permanent-leader onboarding. A new vendor, integration, report, support case, backup change, entity launch or regulatory direction must trigger a documented residency assessment. Six weeks are ring-fenced for handover; this role will not become continuing privacy operations.

Exit requires a reconciled people-data map, purpose and jurisdiction register, copy and transfer controls, approved exception process, retention propagation, evidence ownership, breach escalation, vendor obligations and operating measures. Handover passes when the successor traces three unseen employee records across primary, derived, support and backup paths, then closes one prohibited replica without losing statutory evidence or service continuity.

The interim can quarantine unapproved feeds, revoke nonessential support access, stop new people-data integrations, prioritise remediation engineering, replace temporary workstream leads and direct ₹480 million of authorised control investment. Privacy and Legal determine lawful bases and transfer requirements; Security owns incident response; business executives accept residual risk. Platform termination, employee notification and spending above delegation need committee approval.

Legal interpretation, breach notification, cyber forensics, payroll operation, employee-case decisions, core-platform replacement and enterprise-wide data governance remain outside scope. The authority may demand evidence that a copy is deleted or constrained but cannot issue a legal opinion, conceal required records, repurpose protected case data for analytics or certify compliance merely because a diagram has been updated.

Why this seat is open

The previous leader was removed after audit evidence contradicted the documented cross-border data model and no function could account for derived copies. The organisation needs temporary decision authority to contain active replication and prove deletion propagation before external assurance, while recruiting a permanent people-data governance executive.

What you will own

• Trace employee data from authoritative collection through integration, analytics, support, export, archive and backup paths.
• Reconcile actual movement with approved purpose, employing entity, jurisdiction, retention and counsel-provided transfer conditions.
• Stop or constrain feeds whose destination, purpose, access population or deletion behaviour lacks defensible evidence.
• Establish controls for derived datasets, administrator support, vendor diagnostics, emergency access and regional failover copies.
• Sequence remediation by employee harm, regulatory exposure, data sensitivity, persistence and operational dependency.
• Lead four exercises involving prohibited replication, failed deletion, vendor access and emergency-region activation.
• Hand residency authority to a successor who independently traces and closes unfamiliar cross-system data paths.

Candidate qualifications

• Held senior people-data governance authority across multinational HR platforms, analytics estates and outsourced operations.
• Recovered verifiable actual data lineage where design documents omitted derived extracts, support copies or backup movement.
• Translated counsel-supplied jurisdiction requirements into enforceable architecture, access, retention and vendor controls.
• Managed urgent containment without destroying required employment records or disabling critical workforce services.
• Kept privacy interpretation, security incident response, employee-case ownership and technology remediation properly separated.
• Transferred a residency control environment through record tracing, deletion failure and regional failover demonstrations.

Non-negotiables

• Available within ten days for Delhi NCR leadership, nine system residencies and four jurisdiction-failure exercises.
• Direct multinational people-data remediation is required; policy drafting or privacy training alone is insufficient.
• Will disclose HR platforms, cloud providers, analytics vendors, privacy advisers, employers and assurance relationships.
• Will not issue legal opinions, notify breaches, investigate cyber events, decide employee cases or certify compliance.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe an employee-data replica absent from the approved architecture and how you contained it.
2. 49 words maximum. How did you prove deletion across derived, vendor-support and backup environments?
3. 49 words maximum. State your Delhi NCR availability and the first data path you would quarantine.