Director, Technology Development job in Riyadh

Director, Technology Development

Unlock employer Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Direct to Company 1 hour ago · 15 Oct 2026

Position

About the Role / About the Job
The Director, Technology Development turns the company’s technology ambition into measurable business value. The role provides enterprise leadership across a diverse portfolio of technology domains, connecting business priorities with specialist expertise. It directs investment and execution toward opportunities with the greatest potential to improve safety, productivity, reliability, growth, and operational performance.
This role creates the conditions for technologies to move effectively from discovery and validation into scaled operational deployment. It integrates the work of Chief Specialists and senior subject matter experts, establishes clear portfolio priorities and governance, and ensures technology solutions are operationally ready, adopted, and sustained. Through disciplined prioritization, executive decision-making, and strong technical leadership, the role strengthens the company’s ability to deploy technology at scale while building the specialist capability required for future growth and operational excellence.

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What You Will Deliver
Technology Strategy & Portfolio Direction

Shape and execute an integrated Technology Development portfolio that translates enterprise priorities into focused domain strategies, roadmaps, and investments.
Prioritize opportunities against business value, strategic relevance, deployment readiness, safety, risk, and scalability, balancing near-term performance with longer-term capability.
Integrate priorities across technology domains to reduce fragmentation, strengthen synergies, and focus specialist capacity on the company’s highest-value challenges.

Deployment & Value Realization

Direct the progression of priority technologies from discovery and validation through deployment, adoption, and scale, with clear outcomes, ownership, and decision points.
Establish measurable value hypotheses, baselines, and performance measures that connect technology deployment to operational and business outcomes.
Ensure deployed solutions are embedded into operational workflows and tracked through sustained adoption and value realization.

Portfolio Governance & Execution

Establish a disciplined portfolio operating model covering investment decisions, stage gates, resource allocation, risk, technical assurance, and executive performance reviews.
Strengthen execution by ensuring priority initiatives have robust business cases, accountable ownership, realistic deployment plans, and operational sponsorship.
Resolve critical dependencies and competing priorities across functions, assets, and technology domains, redirecting resources where needed to protect delivery and value.

Technical & People Leadership

Lead and develop Chief Specialists and senior subject matter experts, preserving their technical authority while aligning domain priorities and performance to common enterprise outcomes.
Build a high-performance culture founded on safety, technical rigor, accountability, collaboration, innovation, knowledge transfer, and delivery discipline.
Strengthen succession and critical technology capability through targeted development, external expertise, and strategic partnerships.

Enterprise Alignment & Influence

Align business units, Operations, Engineering, Technology & Innovation, and corporate stakeholders around technology priorities, investment choices, and deployment roadmaps.
Provide senior leadership with clear insight into portfolio performance, value, risks, and investment trade-offs to strengthen decision-making.
Shape external technology partnerships that accelerate access to relevant expertise, solutions, and capabilities while protecting the company’s strategic and operational interests.

What Success Looks Like

Technology investments are concentrated on clearly prioritized opportunities with defined business outcomes, sponsorship, and measurable value.
Priority technologies progress efficiently from discovery and validation into operational deployment, adoption, and scale.
Deployed technologies deliver sustained improvements in targeted safety, productivity, reliability, cost, growth, or operational performance measures.
Portfolio governance enables timely investment, continuation, scaling, or stop decisions based on evidence, readiness, risk, and realized value.
Chief Specialists and senior SMEs operate as aligned enterprise technical authorities with strong succession, knowledge transfer, and capability development.
Business and technology stakeholders align around integrated roadmaps, clear accountabilities, and transparent portfolio performance.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, preferably in Mining, Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Industrial, Mechatronics, Automation, Systems Engineering, or a related discipline.

Experience

20+ years of progressive experience across engineering, technology deployment, operations, major projects, or other relevant asset-intensive environments.
Significant experience in mining, processing, manufacturing, infrastructure, energy, or heavy industry, with exposure to operational performance, safety, and technology-enabled transformation.
Demonstrated experience leading senior specialists or multidisciplinary technical teams and delivering through complex matrix organizations.
Proven experience developing technology strategies, governing enterprise portfolios, and progressing solutions from discovery and validation through scaled operational deployment and sustained value realization.

Skills That Matter