Strategic CDO — Telecom transformation & growth (Singapore)

Position overview

Gladwin International Leadership Advisors is representing a confidential organisation in Telecommunications on a senior CDO leadership mandate anchored in Singapore. The remit explicitly spans Africa, China, Continental Europe.

This is a strategic transformation mandate at CXO level — equal parts operating leadership, change orchestration, and investor / board narrative ownership.

The role suits an operator who treats integration, culture, and capital allocation as one system — not three separate programmes.

Context you will inherit

• Market & sector: TechCo transformation — reorienting a network-centric organisation into a technology and digital services company requires leaders who can disrupt from within
• Geographic spine: Primary hub Singapore with explicit corridor responsibility across Africa, China, Continental Europe.
• Organisation stage: Working capital, liquidity, and funding mix are under scrutiny alongside headline revenue growth.
• Stakeholders: Stakeholders span board or regional executive committee, global functional heads, JV partners, and strategic account buyers.
• Secondary lens: Talent retention — telecom companies struggle to compete with technology sector compensation packages for engineering and digital talent

The mandate (12–24 month arc)

1. Data contracts: Agreements between producers and consumers — schemas, SLAs, and accountability for quality.
2. Feature store / reuse: Stop one-off features; encourage reusable signals for models and analytics.
3. Bias & fairness: Where models affect customers or employees, institute testing and monitoring appropriate to risk.
4. Self-service guardrails: Empower analysts without creating ungoverned copies of sensitive data.
5. Cost of data: Storage, compute, and licence discipline — treat data platforms like P&L lines.
6. External data: Evaluate third-party datasets for provenance, refresh, and compliance fit.

Responsibilities (representative)

• Own enterprise data strategy, governance, and quality accountability.
• Deliver analytics products with product owners and adoption metrics.
• Establish AI / ML governance appropriate to sector regulation.
• Partner with CIO on platforms and with business on domain ownership.
• Build data literacy programmes for executives and managers.

Leadership profile

• Communication: Executive presence in English; additional languages valued where market-relevant.
• Judgment: High signal-to-noise under pressure; ethical clarity; willingness to halt initiatives that break risk appetite.
• Data leadership: Governance plus delivery — not only strategy decks but shipped analytics outcomes.
• Education: Strong undergraduate grounding; MBA / advanced degree / professional qualification common at this level.
• Geographic muscle: Comfort operating from Singapore with regular engagement across Africa, China.

Team & culture

The organisation runs hot — ambitious targets and thin buffers. You need to channel energy into sustainable rhythms: predictable planning, honest risk surfacing, and recovery time for teams after major pushes.

Success measures (examples)

• Financial: Revenue and margin vs. plan; cash conversion; capital efficiency.
• Strategic: Share in priority segments; customer retention in anchor accounts; milestone delivery on transformation.
• People: Engagement trends; regrettable attrition in critical roles; diversity of succession slate.
• Risk: Audit and regulatory outcomes; conduct events; operational resilience metrics.

First 90 days (orientation arc)

• Days 1–30: Shadow key customer journeys or operations — paper over slides where reality diverges.
• Days 30–60: Cut or pause low-value projects freeing capacity for strategic work.
• Days 60–90: Publish first integrated forecast or plan under your ownership — even if directional.
• Build trust with risk, legal, and audit through transparency — surprises erode licence to move fast.
• Pick one cultural signal (e.g. meeting hygiene, promotion criteria) and model it relentlessly.

Stakeholder map (illustrative)

• Internal: Matrix of global product houses and local P&L; tension is normal — your role is to broker trade-offs with data.
• External: Customers who influence reference deals; government or industry bodies in regulated sectors.
• Capital providers: Banks, sponsors, or minority investors — each needs a slightly different narrative on risk.

Travel & mobility

Role requires face-to-face presence in the primary hub with regular regional travel; remote-only not viable.

Compensation

Competitive CDO compensation for Telecommunications leadership: cash, incentive, benefits, and potential equity or carry (case-dependent). Discussed with finalists only.

Application status

This mandate is no longer accepting new applications. The search progressed through Q4 2025 and closed for submissions in February 2026. We retain this posting for transparency on the type of leadership work we carry in Telecommunications and Singapore. For similar active mandates, browse open roles or submit a general profile through executive search inquiry.

Reference: telecommunications · CDO · Singapore · Gladwin International Leadership Advisors