Head of Data & AI

The Opportunity

A high-growth technology organisation in Abu Dhabi is creating a new senior leadership role to establish data and AI as a core business capability. Reporting directly to the CEO, the Head of Data & AI will set the strategy and lead an integrated function covering data engineering and platforms, data science and AI, business intelligence, and data governance. The mandate is to deliver secure, compliant and scalable data platforms and AI solutions that create measurable value for customers, partners and government stakeholders.

Location: Abu Dhabi, onsite, full time

Reports to: CEO

Team: Four function leads (Data Engineering & Platforms, Data Science & AI, BI & Analytics, Data Governance & Quality), some roles still to be hired

What You Will Own

• Strategy and executive advisory: define and execute a multi-year data and AI strategy aligned to the national AI agenda and local government digital priorities. Prioritise high-value use cases, advise the CEO and leadership team on data-driven decisions and emerging technology, and set the operating model for the function.


• Platforms and engineering: own enterprise data architecture across cloud and on-prem platforms, in line with UAE data residency and sovereign cloud requirements. Ensure secure, well-documented integration with core business systems, government platforms and third-party data providers, and set standards for reliability, observability, security and cost optimisation.


• AI product delivery: partner with Product Management to take AI solutions from discovery and proof of concept through to production and adoption. Support digital twin, geospatial and smart-city initiatives, and run structured build, buy or partner assessments for AI capabilities.


• Business intelligence: deliver trusted executive dashboards, performance reporting and market insight, and establish a single, consistent KPI framework with business operations, strategy and finance.


• Governance and responsible AI: chair the data and AI governance forum covering ownership, classification, cataloguing, lineage and quality. Ensure compliance with UAE regulation, manage data and AI risk with cybersecurity, legal and compliance, and enforce evaluation, monitoring and drift-detection standards.


• Ecosystem and adoption: build trusted relationships with government entities, regulators, free zones, technology partners and investors. Drive AI adoption, data literacy and change across the organisation.


• People and commercial: build, lead and retain a high-performing multidisciplinary team, with a focus on developing national talent. Own the data and AI budget (OPEX and CAPEX), vendor and licence management, and business cases with value tracking, including opportunities to commercialise data and AI products.

What You Bring

• 12+ years' progressive experience in data, analytics and AI, including at least 3 years in a senior leadership role leading multidisciplinary teams.


• A proven record of defining and delivering an enterprise data and AI strategy with measurable business impact.


• Experience building or scaling a data and AI function, platform or data products in a high-growth, start-up or transformation environment.


• Modern cloud data architecture and engineering (lakehouse and warehouse, for example Databricks or Snowflake).


• Machine learning, deep learning and generative AI, including LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, AI agents and model evaluation.


• MLOps / LLMOps and CI/CD for data and AI workloads, including deployment, monitoring, versioning and retraining.


• Data governance, data quality, metadata management, privacy engineering and responsible AI frameworks.


• Experience working with regulators and government stakeholders on data sharing, data protection and digital services (preferred).


• Geospatial analytics, digital twins and Arabic-language NLP (strong advantage).


• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, AI, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering or a related field. Master's or PhD in a data, ML or AI discipline preferred.


• Executive presence: strategic thinker with strong influencing, commercial and delivery ownership skills, sound ethical judgement, and excellent written and spoken English (Arabic an advantage).