About the Role
The Senior Manager of Operations & Delivery is responsible for establishing and running the operational and delivery model for a new organization focused on Cybersecurity, Digital Trust, Data Governance, and AI based in Dubai, UAE. Reporting directly to the Head of Cyber Security, this role will serve as the operational second-in-command, translating strategy into execution and ensuring that new services are designed, mobilized, delivered, and scaled with strong governance, commercial discipline, and consistent service quality. Core responsibilities include overseeing professional services, managed security services, SOC/MDR, offensive security, cloud security, GRC, data governance, and AI assurance. The objective is to build an operational model that supports rapid growth while maintaining delivery quality, customer satisfaction, utilization, margin, and operational resilience.
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Duties & Responsibilities
Operating Model & Organizational Build
- Design and implement the operating model for the new cybersecurity organization.
- Define roles, responsibilities, governance, escalation paths, and decision authorities.
- Establish how the new division interfaces with CNS/the company Sales, Pre-Sales, IT, Finance, HR, Procurement, and existing managed-services teams.
- Establish standard operating procedures, service handover, and customer onboarding processes.
- Translate strategic plans into executable operating plans.
Service Delivery Leadership:
- Take executive ownership of delivery performance across cybersecurity, data governance, and AI engagements.
- Ensure projects and managed services are delivered against agreed scope, timelines, SLAs, quality, and margin.
- Act as the senior escalation point for major delivery or customer issues.
AI-SOC / MDR & Managed Services:
- Lead the operational establishment of the new SOC/MDR capability (IT/OT).
- Define the phased AI-SOC operating model, initially covering co-managed services and progressing toward 24×7 capability.
- Establish the SOC's incident management, escalation, shift and capacity model, together with customer onboarding and service-assurance processes.
- Define SLAs and KPIs for managed security services.
- Work with technical leads to embed automation, AI-assisted investigation, and detection engineering.
- Ensure SOC growth is aligned with contracted customer demand and sustainable unit economics.
Resource & Capacity Management:
- Develop the workforce plan for the division.
- Translate commercial pipeline into resource demand and recruitment priorities.
- Manage utilization, capacity, and resource allocation.
- Balance permanent staff, shared CNS capability, contractors, partners, and acquired resources.
- Establish delivery pods aligned to capability and customer demand.
Commercial & Financial Management (working with the Head of Cyber Security):
- Support development and management of the divisional P&L.
- Establish cost models and delivery economics across services.
- Track key financial and delivery metrics against plan, including revenue, margin, utilization, and profitability.
- Ensure services sold by Sales and Pre-Sales can be delivered profitably.
- Identify opportunities to improve delivery leverage and margin.
- Support annual budget and investment planning.
Customer Experience & Service Management:
- Establish customer-service management standards.
- Implement monthly and quarterly service reviews for strategic customers.
- Ensure customer issues are tracked through resolution.
- Establish executive reporting on service performance, risk, and security posture.
- Build customer satisfaction and retention into delivery KPIs.
- Support renewal and expansion of managed-service customers.
Quality, Risk & Governance:
- Establish a formal delivery quality framework.
- Introduce project and service assurance reviews.
- Maintain operational and delivery risk registers.
- Ensure adherence to contractual, regulatory, and internal governance requirements.
- Establish corrective-action processes following delivery issues.
- Support required certifications and compliance programmes.
Service Industrialisation:
- Work with each practice lead to industrialise services — defined scope, delivery methodology, pricing, and SLA/KPI framework — turning bespoke delivery into repeatable, reusable IP.
Pre-Sales & Bid Governance:
- Support major bids and strategic proposals, validating resource, delivery, and risk assumptions before contractual commitment.
- Participate in customer presentations where operational capability is important.
- Support development of Statements of Work and service descriptions, ensuring proposals have realistic mobilisation timelines.
Leadership & People Development:
- Build a high-performance delivery culture.
- Mentor delivery managers and technical leads.
- Establish performance expectations and accountability.
- Support succession planning.
- Create structured career and capability-development plans.
- Drive collaboration across the different practice areas.
Qualifications
Education
- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Business, Engineering or a related field
- Master's degree / MBA, or project and service-management certifications (e.g. PMP, PRINCE2, ITIL) is desired
Experience
- 15+ years in technology, cybersecurity, managed services, or enterprise service delivery, including significant senior leadership experience and proven experience building or transforming service organisations.
- UAE/GCC experience in managing complex enterprise customer environments and large-scale, multi-vendor programmes; strong commercial and P&L understanding is desired.
Additional Information
Skills & Abilities
- Strong operational leadership, delivery excellence, and commercial judgment
- Resource, capacity, and organisational-design experience
- Governance, risk management, and problem resolution
- Strong executive stakeholder and customer engagement
- Working knowledge across AI-SOC/MDR, SIEM/XDR/SOAR, incident response, cloud security, offensive security, GRC, data governance, and AI assurance
- ITIL/service-management and programme/project-governance certifications
Compliance with policies and procedures based on the ISO standards adopted by the organization.
Department: Services
