Role Overview:

We have a good opportunity for Head Smart Shared Services position with our client based at Delhi NCR.

JD for the position:

Position: Head - Shared Services

Location: Delhi NCR

Experience: 15+ Years

Role Clarity:

To build one of the first genuinely agentic shared-services operations in India with a mandate, capital and direct access to ownership that a large-company GBS role rarely offers. The centre we build becomes the operating backbone for a growing group of businesses across three continents.

Our client is operating and portfolio businesses across lubricants, energy, distribution and logistics in India, the Middle East and Africa, is establishing a Smart Shared Services Centre (SSC) in Delhi NCR. The SSC will deliver finance & accounting, treasury operations, HR & payroll, IT, procurement, compliance/company-secretarial support and tax operations to group businesses in India and overseas.

This is not a conventional lift-and-shift SSC. It is being designed AI-first: a large share of transactional work - invoice processing, reconciliations, payroll runs, employee and IT helpdesks, sourcing support, compliance trackers and management reporting - will be executed by AI agents working alongside a lean human team. The Head of Smart Shared Services will build this human-plus-agent operation from the ground up: the operating model, the technology stack, the agent workforce, the people, and the service culture.

Build and run the SSC:

- Stand up the centre end-to-end: operating model, location build-out, entity/service-agreement framework, technology stack, hiring and training.

- Migrate work from group businesses in phased waves across India, the UAE, Oman and Africa - process documentation, knowledge transfer, parallel runs, cut-over and stabilisation.

- Run day-to-day service delivery against SLAs, with clear escalation paths and monthly service reviews with each business.

Design the agentic operating model:

- Define which activities are executed by AI agents, which by people, and which by people supervising agents; design human-in-the-loop checkpoints, exception queues and maker-checker controls.

- Select and deploy the agent platform and automation stack (LLM-based agents, workflow orchestration, RPA where still relevant, document AI, integration with ERPs and payroll/HR systems).

- Build, test and continuously improve a library of production agents e.g. AP invoice capture-to-post, bank and intercompany reconciliations, payroll input validation, employee/IT service desks, vendor onboarding, compliance calendars and flash reporting.

- Establish the digital-workforce governance layer: agent access controls, audit trails, output QA and accuracy monitoring, model/agent versioning, cost-per-transaction tracking, and clear accountability for agent errors.

Controls, compliance and data:

- Ensure intercompany charging, documentation and controls meet transfer-pricing, GST and related-party requirements, working with the groups tax and legal advisors.

- Own data protection across borders - India DPDP Act and source-country regimes for HR, finance and vendor data handled by the centre, including what data agents may access and process.

- Deliver audit-ready processes: standardised controls, segregation of duties (human and agent), and clean support for statutory and internal audit across jurisdictions.

People and change:

- Hire and lead a lean team of process owners, agent trainers/supervisors and service managers; define new roles that did not exist in a traditional SSC.

- Lead change management with each business: retained-organisation design, communication, and retention of key local staff through transition.

Who we are looking for:

- 15+ years in shared services / GBS / GCC operations, with at least one experience building or substantially transforming a multi-function centre - ideally serving multiple countries.

- Demonstrated delivery of AI/automation at scale in operations - you have put agents, LLM workflows or intelligent automation into production, not just piloted them - and can speak concretely about exception rates, guardrails and benefits realised.

- Strong finance-operations backbone (P2P, O2C, R2R, payroll) with working fluency in treasury, HR and IT service management.

- Comfort with the compliance surface of a cross-border captive: transfer pricing, GST on intercompany services, data protection, audit.

- Builders temperament: hands-on, ambiguity-tolerant, able to hire well and move fast with a small team; equally credible with CFOs, auditors and engineers.

- Experience across India + Middle East/Africa operations is a strong plus; so is exposure to family-office or promoter-group environments where discretion is essential.