People Operations & Engagement Lead

WHO WE ARE

Our group builds the infrastructure that other companies build their AI on. We started in Dubai in 2018 and now run across nearly 40 countries, with partners and customers in over 110. The group is organized into three arms: technology, which invents and owns what we build; commercial, which takes it to market through our partners and subsidiaries; and a not-for-profit ecosystem that never sells anything and exists to build trust, upskill the market and shape how this technology gets governed. Running horizontally beneath all three is shared services businesses, the operational backbone every company in the group draws on instead of building its own. Our company is one of those shared services, dedicated to talent and people operations across the entire ecosystem, from hiring and onboarding through to people governance, culture, engagement and how people experience working here. Around 187 people work here directly with another 400 across our subsidiaries, spread over 30-plus companies and 70-plus nationalities, growing at roughly 300x every 18 months.

WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS

• The group has no departments and no managers -it runs on small teams who work to each other under agreed service levels, so every team is effectively a client of the next one. That is why a business this size moves as fast as it does.
• You own the rhythm that keeps it connected. Businesses and teams who all have something others would find interesting. Your job is to create the occasions that bring them together, and to make them worth turning up to.
• The fun part is that nothing here is copy and paste. Every function operates differently and wants different things, so what you coordinate for a technical team looks nothing like what you coordinate for a commercial one. You get to work that out and then build it.
• Most of what you create also doubles as a shop window. A showcase tells outside talent what work here looks like. A coaching programme shows how we develop people. What happens inside becomes the story we tell outside, and that is how we keep good people interested in us before a job opens.

WHAT YOU OWN

Knowing what is going on. Quarterly engagement surveys, eNPS and new joiner check-ins. You read what comes back and turn it into a clear picture of what each team wants more of.

The engagement programme. You design the calendar for the whole group, weekly through to annual, and coordinate everything that makes each item happen: the people, the content, the logistics, the invites. Sport and social, learning sessions, showcases, hackathons, all hands, cultural celebrations. You also create recognition programmes that keep good work visible.

Learning and development. You match each audience to the right training, from founders and leads through to technical and non-technical teams and coordinate the coaching programmes that support them. The annual people’s governance and culture training sits with you, as does the induction every new joiner goes through.

Talent-facing events. You create formats that put outside talent in the same room as our teams: showcases, portfolio sessions, internships, best practice sessions. Each one engages our people and builds the candidate network at the same time.

The story, in and out. A newsletter twice a quarter, sourced from the companies in the group that have news to share. Our company’s presence on LinkedIn. Campaigns that keep exceptional people close, including those we have spoken to and not hired yet.

Knowing whether it worked. Work with the internal team to get a monthly view of retention, enablement, satisfaction, pipeline and training completion, shared with leadership. It tells you what to change next quarter.

THE THREAD

Read those together and it is one loop. You listen, you work out what each team wants, you create the engagement that meets it, you see whether it landed, and what you learn shapes what comes next. Everything that loop produces is also the material for the story we tell outside, to the people we want here next.

Do this well and a group of 30-plus companies feels like one business. It is a rare thing to get to build from scratch, and you will see the effect of it every week.

WHO'S THIS IS FOR

Someone with a genuine eye for how groups of people work. You can read a room, and you can read a room you are not standing in: you know which team is drifting, which one needs bringing together, and what kind of occasion will actually land with them. You understand that engineers and commercial teams engage with completely different things, that a session across time zones has to be designed differently to one held in a room, and that the format decides the outcome long before the content does.

You can design something people want to turn up to twice. You are comfortable reading a survey result and working out what it is telling you, and just as comfortable in front of a founder making the case for what you want to run. You write well enough that people read to the end. You like an open brief, because the playbook here is a starting point and you will be writing most of it yourself.

We care more about ownership than years of experience. You will have room to try things, get some of them wrong, and keep what works.

WHAT YOU'LL GET

• Medical insurance for you and up to two dependants
• Annual flight home
• Hybrid working
• Unlimited leave
• A flat structure with minimal hierarchy, where you are trusted to lead through ownership. Freedom to fail fast, pivot and take the lesson with you