Director IT

Job Family:

IT Management (India)

Travel Required:

Up to 25%

Clearance Required:

None

What You Will Do:

The Director, India IT – Applications & Transformation Leader is the senior leader accountable for the full India IT organization and its contribution to Guidehouse’s global technology strategy. The role combines enterprise leadership for India with a primary mandate to build a strong, scalable application capability that supports major platforms such as Workday and Microsoft Dynamics, as well as custom-developed capabilities such as Engagement Hub.

This leader will shape talent, delivery methods, technical depth, and business partnership across the India team. The role will work closely with global application portfolio leaders, business-function executives, architecture, cybersecurity, data and AI, and operational teams to translate enterprise priorities into secure, scalable solutions and sustained business outcomes.

An India IT Operations Lead will report to this role and will manage day-to-day regional operations, service delivery, infrastructure coordination, and operational execution. The Director remains accountable for the performance, integration, talent strategy, and overall effectiveness of the entire India IT organization.

• Build India into a strategic center of excellence for enterprise applications, platform configuration, integration, testing, technical delivery, and application support.
• Create durable delivery capacity for Workday, Microsoft Dynamics, and custom-developed enterprise capabilities, including Engagement Hub and future digital products.
• Increase India IT’s ability to engage business functions as a consultative transformation partner, not only as a task-oriented delivery resource.
• Establish clear accountability between application delivery and India operations, with the Operations Lead managing daily run responsibilities and escalating material risks and decisions.
• Develop a high-performing talent model with strong succession, technical career paths, leadership depth, and the ability to flex capacity across strategic priorities.
• Improve delivery predictability, solution quality, operational readiness, documentation, and transition from project delivery into ongoing support.

1. India IT Enterprise Leadership

• Serve as the senior leader accountable for the full India IT organization, spanning application delivery, engineering, platform support, operations, and shared technology services.
• Translate global IT strategy, portfolio roadmaps, and business priorities into an integrated India capability, workforce, and execution plan.
• Act as the principal technology partner for India-based leaders while maintaining strong alignment with Guidehouse global CIO leadership and enterprise portfolio owners.
• Create a unified culture across application and operations teams with clear decision rights, performance expectations, service ownership, and escalation paths.
• Represent India IT in enterprise governance, investment, capacity, risk, and transformation discussions.

2. Enterprise Applications & Product Capability

• Build and lead application capabilities supporting Workday, Microsoft Dynamics, and custom-developed enterprise products such as Engagement Hub.
• Partner with global portfolio leaders and business-function leadership to understand functional strategy, shape roadmaps, assess requirements, and convert priorities into executable delivery plans.
• Establish platform and product ownership discipline across design, configuration, development, integration, testing, deployment, enhancement, and support.
• Develop reusable technical and delivery capabilities across application engineering, integration, quality assurance, DevSecOps, data, automation, and production readiness.
• Ensure India teams develop deep platform expertise and business-domain understanding rather than operating solely as general-purpose delivery capacity.
• Create mechanisms to share talent and specialized expertise across portfolio teams without diluting business-domain accountability.

3. Business Transformation & Functional Partnership

• Bring direct experience supporting transformation in large, complex organizations, including the modernization of core business functions such as human capital, finance, sales, marketing, legal, resource management, or enterprise operations.
• Challenge fragmented or purely technical requirements and help leaders define future-state processes, capability roadmaps, operating-model implications, and measurable outcomes.
• Promote simplification, standardization, automation, and adoption of platform-native capabilities before introducing unnecessary customization.

4. Delivery Excellence & Modern Engineering

• Establish consistent delivery practices for agile execution, product management, DevSecOps, release readiness, quality engineering, documentation, and application lifecycle management.
• Improve predictability across strategic programs through disciplined scope, dependency, capacity, risk, issue, and milestone management.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, Data and Agentic Foundations, and Strong Operations to ensure solutions comply with architecture, data, security, integration, and production standards.
• Advance the responsible use of AI-enabled and agentic development methods to increase team capacity, quality, speed, and reuse while preserving human accountability and control.
• Create a clear project-to-operations transition model, including acceptance criteria, knowledge transfer, support ownership, service levels, monitoring, and continuous improvement.

5. Operations Leadership & Delegated Run Accountability

• Lead and develop the India IT Operations Lead, who will be accountable for daily regional operations, support coordination, operational performance, business continuity, and service improvement.
• Set objectives, decision rights, service expectations, metrics, and escalation thresholds for India IT operations while avoiding duplication with global Strong Operations ownership.
• Retain executive accountability for India service performance, workforce integration, major incidents, operational risk, and the effectiveness of the application-to-operations handoff.
• Ensure regional operations comply with enterprise standards, security requirements, audit obligations, and global service-management processes.

6. People, Organization & Capability Development

• Build, lead, and develop multidisciplinary teams across application platforms, custom development, integration, testing, data, operations, and technical leadership.
• Define the India application talent strategy, including priority skills, hiring profiles, sourcing approach, internal mobility, succession, and leadership development.
• Establish communities of practice and technical career paths that deepen expertise in Workday, Microsoft Dynamics, modern development, integration, quality engineering, and application support.
• Coach leaders to operate with greater business acumen, consultative capability, accountability, urgency, and enterprise perspective.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition and Human Capital teams to attract, develop, engage, and retain high-caliber technology talent.

7. Governance, Risk, Financial & Vendor Management

• Own the India IT workforce and delivery plan, budget inputs, resource allocation, vendor utilization, and cost optimization in alignment with global IT priorities.
• Provide transparent reporting on delivery, application health, operational performance, capacity, talent, risks, financials, and improvement plans.
• Ensure compliance with corporate policy, cybersecurity standards, privacy requirements, audit obligations, change control, and regulatory commitments.
• Oversee strategic delivery partners and vendors, holding them accountable for quality, outcomes, knowledge transfer, contractual performance, and value.
• Identify and mitigate concentration, continuity, talent, delivery, security, and operational risks across the India technology organization.

What You Will Need:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related discipline.
• 15+ years of progressive enterprise technology experience, including significant leadership responsibility in a global or large-scale organization.
• Proven experience leading enterprise application delivery, platform teams, or technology transformation across multiple business functions.
• Demonstrated experience building or materially scaling offshore or India-based application capabilities, including talent, delivery methods, governance, and leadership depth.
• Strong knowledge of core business functions and the ability to connect process, data, controls, and technology into an integrated transformation agenda.
• Experience supporting major enterprise platforms such as Workday, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, ServiceNow, or comparable products; direct Workday and/or Dynamics experience is strongly preferred.
• Experience delivering or supporting custom-developed enterprise applications using modern engineering, integration, testing, DevSecOps, and lifecycle-management practices.
• Proven success partnering with senior business and technology executives, influencing across organizational boundaries, and leading through ambiguity.
• Demonstrated ability to manage geographically distributed teams, complex delivery portfolios, budgets, vendors, risk, and organizational change.

What Would Be Nice To Have:

• Master’s degree in technology, engineering, business administration, or a related field.
• Direct leadership experience with Workday HCM or Financials, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Azure, or enterprise integration platforms.
• Experience modernizing back-office or front-office functions in a large professional-services, consulting, financial-services, healthcare, government-services, or similarly complex enterprise environment.
• Experience establishing product-oriented operating models, centers of excellence, full-lifecycle platform management, and measurable service or transformation outcomes.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled software delivery, agentic development, data platforms, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, and cloud operating models.

About Guidehouse India

At Guidehouse India, we’re redefining what’s possible by creating opportunities that change lives. Guidehouse is a global professional services firm that delivers advisory, technology, and managed services to clients across both the commercial and public sectors. Our teams turn bold ideas into solutions that transform industries, strengthen communities, and drive meaningful impact worldwide.

Across our Chennai, Trivandrum, and Gurugram locations, you’ll find opportunities where your passion and curiosity help shape what comes next. With cutting edge benefits, innovative learning and development programs, and a people first culture, we empower our people to lead with purpose.

We continue to expand our teams and capabilities across India, investing in state-of-the-art offices and high impact work. Here, you’ll collaborate with experts from around the world, build deep expertise, explore new domains, and accelerate your professional growth while making a real impact.

What We Offer

At Guidehouse India, we are committed to supporting the well-being of our people and their families at every stage of life. We offer competitive compensation and a comprehensive benefits package designed to help you thrive both inside and outside the workplace.

Our benefits include resources such as in house physician consultations, nutritious food options at the workplace, and confidential counseling through our Employee Assistance Program, along with other wellness focused offerings that support your overall well being.

Our comprehensive learning and development programs ensure you’re continuously upskilled and ready to tackle what’s next, so you can shape your own career path while contributing to meaningful, purpose driven work.

Important Fraud Notice

All official recruitment communications from Guidehouse will come from email addresses ending in @guidehouse.com or @myworkday.com. Guidehouse never charges fees, requests money transfers, or collects payments from educational institutions for recruitment events. Please do not share banking or personal financial information with anyone claiming to represent Guidehouse for hiring purposes.

Contact Us

If you have visited our website to explore career opportunities or to apply for a position and have questions, please contact the Guidehouse Recruiting team at IndiaRecruiting@guidehouse.com. All information you provide will be kept confidential and used only as required to support the recruitment process.

To learn more about Guidehouse in India, visit www.guidehouse.com/india.

Guidehouse does not accept unsolicited resumes through or from search firms or staffing agencies. All unsolicited resumes will be considered the property of Guidehouse and Guidehouse will not be obligated to pay a placement fee.