The posting
Position Overview
- Reports to the VP of Asia Operations and is responsible for leading and growing SCRG's India operations, including people management, recruiting, customer operations, business development, budget oversight, and financial governance.
- This is a hands-on leadership role requiring a strong manufacturing background and the ability to understand both the technical and business needs of our customers. The Director will actively support recruiting, including technically interviewing candidates for engineering and manufacturing-related positions, while building and developing a high-performing local team.
- The Director is also expected to identify growth opportunities, strengthen customer relationships, and drive the use of technology, data, AI, and automation to improve how we operate.
Duties and Responsibilities
1. Operations Leadership & Compliance
- Lead overall India operations across locations and functions.
- Ensure compliance with applicable statutory, regulatory, tax, labor, and employment requirements.
- Maintain and continuously improve local policies, procedures, controls, and operating practices.
- Drive improvements in productivity, efficiency, quality, and scalability.
- Manage key external service providers, facilities, vendors, and administrative requirements.
- Proactively identify and manage operational risks.
2. Talent Acquisition & People Leadership
- Lead recruiting for customer-facing and internal positions in India.
- Conduct technical interviews and assessments for engineering, manufacturing, operations, and other relevant positions, or assign the appropriate technical expert when needed.
- Apply practical manufacturing and technical knowledge to assess candidate capabilities against customer requirements.
- Build, develop, and retain a high-performing team.
- Set clear performance expectations and goals, regularly monitor individual and team performance, provide coaching and feedback, and take appropriate improvement actions, including initiating a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) when needed.
- Oversee employee onboarding, relations, engagement, and retention.
3. Customer & Business Development
- Serve as a senior escalation point for customers across operational and technical matters.
- Build strong customer relationships and understand their business, manufacturing operations, technical requirements, and workforce needs.
- Work closely with Account Management and Sales to retain and expand existing accounts.
- Identify new business leads and opportunities in the India market.
- Support customer meetings, proposals, solution development, and new business opportunities.
- Maintain a strong understanding of India's manufacturing landscape, customer trends, and emerging opportunities.
- Support technical and operational customer projects, including sourcing, supplier selection, and other manufacturing supports.
4. Technology & Continuous Improvement
- Champion the use of technology, data, AI, and automation across India operations.
- Drive effective adoption of company systems and tools across recruiting, HR, operations, reporting, and customer management.
- Identify opportunities to automate repetitive work and improve workflows.
- Use data to identify trends, problems, and opportunities and support better decision-making.
- Support regional and global technology and process-improvement initiatives.
5. Budget & Financial Management
- Develop, control, and optimize the India operating budget.
- Maximize resource utilization and identify cost and productivity improvements.
- Forecast annual budgets and workforce requirements.
- Review and approve payroll, expenses, and required payments.
- Review financial reports and support Corporate Finance, Accounting, audits, and statutory requirements.
- Maintain appropriate financial controls and responsible management of company resources.
6. Other Responsibilities
- Collaborate closely with other Asia operations leaders, Account Management, Recruiting, HR, Finance, and corporate functions.
- Support regional and global initiatives as assigned.
- Take on additional responsibilities as the India business continues to grow.
Qualifications & Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Operations, or another relevant technical discipline; MBA is a plus.
- Minimum 10 years of relevant experience, including significant leadership and people-management responsibility.
- Strong experience in manufacturing, EMS, electronics, supply chain, or a closely related manufacturing environment is required.
- Strong understanding of manufacturing processes, engineering functions, supplier operations, quality, and supply chain.
- Must be technically capable of interviewing and assessing candidates for engineering and manufacturing-related positions.
- Strong commercial mindset with the ability to identify opportunities, understand customer needs, and support business development.
- Proven customer-facing and people leadership experience.
- Technology-savvy and comfortable adopting new systems, digital tools, AI, automation, and data-driven ways of working.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, and influencing skills.
- Highly proactive and self-driven, with a strong sense of ownership and the ability to anticipate needs, take initiative, and drive actions independently.
- Fluent professional English required.
