GVW Group is a dynamic private investment and industrial holding company dedicated since 1993 to growing and starting businesses. We take an entrepreneurial approach to building value for our scalable early stage, high-growth, and mid-sized operating companies by providing strategic expertise and resources. Along the way, we have expanded globally into diverse industries ranging from manufacturing to technology, distribution, big data, engineering, and energy efficiency.

Summary:

GVW Group is a flat, operator-driven industrial and investment platform with long-term capital and safety-critical businesses. Risk at GVW is not managed through policy alone, it is governed through decision rights, capital commitments, and accountability. This role exists to ensure that enterprise risk is visible, deliberate, and owned at the correct level, and that authority, incentives, and controls remain aligned as the organization scales. This is a hands-on, organization-wide operating role, not an advisory or compliance function.

The Head of Group Risk & Decision Governance is accountable for designing, implementing, and enforcing GVW’s enterprise risk and decision-governance framework, spanning operating companies and the investment function.

The role ensures GVW can grow with speed without fragility, by governing how risk is identified, accepted, transferred, monitored, and escalated across the platform.

Key Responsibilities:

Enterprise Risk Intelligence, Culture & Early Warning

• Establish organization-wide mechanisms that surface risk early across operations, products, finance, customers, and investments
• Institutionalize learning from failures, near-misses, and external industry events
• Maintain a forward-looking, enterprise-level view of material risks across GVW
• Reinforce a culture where risk is discussed factually, early, and without politics

Crisis Preparedness, Business Continuity & Resilience

• Own crisis-readiness frameworks and escalation protocols across the group
• Lead scenario planning, pre-mortems, and executive simulations
• Coordinate preparedness and response for high-impact events, including:
  • Safety or product failures
  • Cyber incidents
  • Regulatory actions
  • Material litigation or reputational events
  • Supply-chain or operational disruptions

Technology, Cyber, Data & AI Risk

• Govern enterprise risk related to:
  • Cybersecurity and cyber-physical systems
  • Connected products, telematics, diagnostics, and remote access
  • Data governance, privacy, and model risk
  • AI-enabled decision-making and automation
• Ensure clear accountability for AI outputs, defined limits on automated authority, human override, and auditable escalation paths

Product Safety, Quality, Warranty & Liability

• Oversee enterprise risk related to:
  • Product safety and liability exposure
  • Warranty policy, warranty-tail exposure, and reserve adequacy
  • Engineering and system-integration risk
  • Field reliability, service performance, and uptime commitments
• Partner with engineering, operations, service, legal, and finance to ensure appropriate risk gates before launches, major changes, or new commitments

• Maintain visibility over material enterprise risks related to:
  • Regulatory obligations (safety, environmental, labor, trade, etc.)
  • Contractual risk terms (indemnities, guarantees, limitations of liability)
  • Litigation trends and claim patterns
• Ensure legal and regulatory risks are framed upstream in decisions, not handled reactively

Financial, Treasury, & Counterparty Risk

• Partner with Finance to oversee enterprise exposure related to:
  • Counterparty and credit exposure (customers, suppliers, insurers, banks)
  • Concentration and correlation risk across the platform
  • Structural fraud risk arising from control weaknesses

Insurance Strategy & Risk Transfer

• Own the enterprise approach to risk transfer and insurance strategy, including:
  • Coverage architecture aligned to actual exposures
  • Claims governance and trend oversight
  • Understanding and communication of uninsured and self-insured risk
• Ensure insurance complements—rather than substitutes for—structural risk control

Capital Commitment & Investment Risk

• Embed risk discipline into:
  • Capital allocation decisions
  • Acquisitions, minority investments, and exits
  • Guarantees, warranties, and long-term obligations
• Evaluate exposure related to:
  • Irreversibility and duration
  • Control and visibility limits
  • Leverage and financing structures

Operational, Supply-Chain & Geopolitical Risk

• Govern risk related to:
  • Supplier concentration and single points of failure
  • Critical parts and logistics dependencies
  • Geopolitical sourcing and trade disruption
  • Plant and throughput resilience

Segregation of Duties & Structural Controls

• Design and Test segregation of duties so no individual or function controls:
  • Origination
  • Approval
  • Execution
  • Reconciliation
• Ensure separation between commercial incentives, risk acceptance, and financial execution

Decision Authority, Approvals & Signing Rights

• Design, implement, and maintain GVW’s group-wide framework for:
  • Delegation of authority
  • Approval thresholds
  • Signing rights
• Ensure authority aligns with risk magnitude, duration, and reversibility
• Identify and correct drift between documented authority and actual practice
• Enforce adherence and escalate breaches

Governance Cadence & Truth Infrastructure

• Establish a high-signal operating cadence for risk review and escalation
• Provide leadership with a clear view of where GVW is implicitly taking risk
• Ensure accountability for remediation, not just reporting

Requirements

Skills:

• Senior operating background in industrial, infrastructure, aerospace, defense, energy, or other safety-critical environments
• Experience building and enforcing enterprise risk, authority, or control frameworks
• Lived experience with failure, escalation, or high-stakes decisions
• Highly structured, independent, and comfortable holding peers accountable

Work Environment: Ex. Office setting and plant environment

Physical Requirements:

• Capable of wearing task specific personal protective equipment which may include dust mask, safety shoes, gloves, safety glasses, and ear protection.
• Capable of meeting OSHA standards for manual lifting guidelines: < 50lbs
• While performing the duties of this job it is required to stand, walk, and use hands; reach with hands or arms; climb, balance, stoop, kneel, or crouch when necessary for job activity.
• Ability to stand and/or walk for extended periods.
• Ability to work in a variety of weather conditions and temperatures.

Legal and Compliance Statements
 

At-Will Employment:

This job description does not create a contract of employment, nor does it alter the at-will employment relationship. Employment with the company is voluntary and may be terminated at will by either the employee or the company, with or without cause, and with or without notice.

Job Duties Disclaimer:
The duties and responsibilities outlined here are representative but not exhaustive of the tasks that the employee may be required to perform. Management reserves the right to modify, add, or remove duties and to assign other tasks as necessary to meet business needs.

Equal Employment Opportunity:
Autocar is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Compliance with Laws and Policies:
The employee must adhere to all federal, state, and local employment laws and regulations, as well as all company policies and procedures.

Reasonable Accommodations (ADA Compliance):
Autocar complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. Employees who require assistance or accommodations should contact Human Resources.

Confidentiality and Data Protection:

Employees are expected to maintain the confidentiality of sensitive information and comply with company policies regarding data protection and proprietary information, in accordance with applicable laws.

Non-Exhaustive List of Duties:

This job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities or qualifications associated with the position.