About the Role
This position is responsible for designing and managing on-premises and hybrid cloud infrastructure, enterprise data platforms, and leading engineering practices within the Data & AI Technology practice. The role requires a strategic thinker with robust technical expertise to shape platform architecture standards, oversee engineering delivery, manage teams, and drive innovation in both operations and people management.
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Roles & Responsibilities
- Strong expertise in designing and managing on-premises and hybrid cloud infrastructure, including compute, storage, networking, and enterprise platform environments.
- Deep knowledge of enterprise data and integration platforms, including Oracle systems and Informatica ETL/data management solutions.
- Proven experience in modern platform engineering, including Kubernetes, cloud-native architectures, DevSecOps, and infrastructure-as-code practices.
Experience
- Minimum 10 years of experience in enterprise architecture, infrastructure engineering, cloud platforms, data platform delivery, or AI deployment.
- Minimum 5 years in a leadership role managing Data/AI practice or similar technology unit.
- Proven track record of leading end-to-end technical delivery of complex, multi-technology programmes in mission-critical client environments.
- Experience in implementing MLOps frameworks and ensuring strong architecture governance, engineering standards, and end-to-end quality control.
Strategic Responsibilities
- Define and govern the overall engineering strategy, delivery framework, and platform architecture standards for the Data & AI Technology practice.
- Establish and institutionalize best practices for hybrid cloud, on-premises, and sovereign platform architectures across client environments.
- Lead the continuous evolution of engineering toolchains and delivery capabilities, including DevSecOps, MLOps, and infrastructure-as-code frameworks.
- Contribute to the go-to-market strategy by productizing reusable engineering accelerators, platform blueprints, and reference architecture as client offerings.
- Partner with Technology leadership to strengthen the practice’s technical credibility and delivery excellence in support of business development initiatives.
- Act as the principal authority for enterprise architecture decisions, platform design, and AI infrastructure strategies across client engagements.
- Lead architecture governance forums and technical review boards for major programmes, ensuring alignment with standards and best practices.
- Ensure all solution architectures are designed with scalability, security, resilience, and long-term operational sustainability in mind.
- Drive engineering innovation through the adoption of emerging technologies such as Kubernetes, edge computing, and sovereign AI platforms.
- Oversee the continuous improvement of platform engineering practices to enhance delivery efficiency, standardization, and reusability across engagements.
Operational Responsibilities
- Lead end-to-end engineering delivery across architecture, infrastructure, data platforms, and AI deployment programmes, ensuring execution excellence and client satisfaction.
- Govern technical delivery standards across on-premises, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments, ensuring alignment with defined quality and performance benchmarks.
- Manage engineering teams to ensure effective delivery of platform, infrastructure, and architecture solutions across concurrent client engagements.
- Implement and enforce DevSecOps, MLOps, and platform engineering standards across all projects to ensure consistency, automation, and security compliance.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership to resolve critical engineering and infrastructure issues and manage escalations across delivery engagements.
- Lead the design, deployment, and optimization of enterprise data platforms, including Oracle, Informatica, and cloud-native data ecosystems.
- Oversee infrastructure delivery across compute, storage, networking, and Kubernetes environments to ensure scalable and high-performance systems.
- Ensure platform resiliency through proactive capacity planning, performance optimization, and regular disaster recovery testing.
- Enforce platform security standards in alignment with cybersecurity frameworks, regulatory requirements, and sovereign data policies.
- Lead, develop, and mentor a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, platform specialists, and MLOps practitioners.
- Define technical competency frameworks and career development pathways, ensuring continuous upskilling and capability building within the team.
- Manage resource planning and allocation across engagements to optimize utilization and ensure effective delivery execution across projects.
- Monitor engineering KPIs and enforce governance and quality assurance processes, while providing regular technical and delivery updates to senior leadership and governance forums.
People Management Responsibilities
- Ensures the culture of the practice is aligned with the overall culture and ways of working.
- Track the progress and offer support for the advancement of knowledge and skills of team members.
- Provide guidance and direction to direct reports by managing their performance through appropriate feedback, coaching, and counseling.
- Provide inputs about project team members in their performance appraisal and recommendations for promotion and bonuses/incentives.
- Participate in recruitment and retention activities and support leadership and functional capability building initiatives through training as per organization’s guidelines.
- Facilitate succession planning for critical roles within the practice unit.
- Provide strong, dynamic leadership that mentors, develops, and guides employees to efficiently perform and achieve customer delivery excellence.
- Foster a high level of employee engagement and retention of talent.
Qualifications
Education:
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Economics, Computer Science, or a related discipline.
- Master's degree (MBA, MSc) from a recognized institution is strongly preferred.
Behavioural Skills:
- Leadership & Team Development
- Customer Centricity
- Execution Excellence
- Result Orientation
- Team Management
- Attention to Detail
Language Requirement:
- Arabic (preferred)
- English (mandatory)
