About the Role
Own the data backbone of the Group: the platforms through which data is ingested, stored, modeled, governed, and made available for analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and operational use across the company and its subsidiaries.
Establish end-to-end accountability from data platform engineering to operations, building AI-ready foundations and a self-service model that lets Group Digital and the business consume trusted data at speed, without the data platform becoming a bottleneck.
Serve Group Digital's Data & AI teams with data and self-service capabilities; analytics and data science ownership remains with Group Digital.
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Roles and Responsibilities
Data Platform Strategy & Architecture:
- Define and evolve the Group data platform architecture: ingestion, storage, modeling, processing, and serving layers.
- Design for reuse, scalability, security-by-design, and cost efficiency across the Group and subsidiaries.
- Build AI-ready foundations: pipelines, data products, and platform capabilities that support advanced analytics and Artificial Intelligence use cases.
Data Engineering & Ingestion:
- Own data ingestion from enterprise and subsidiary source systems into the Group data platform, with reliable, monitored pipelines.
- Set engineering standards for data pipelines, data products, and platform automation.
- Ensure database management and storage planning support performance and growth.
Platform Data Governance & Quality:
- Implement platform-level data governance: data principles, cataloguing, lineage, quality monitoring, and access controls.
- Safeguard master data alignment and data reliability for downstream consumers.
- Partner with Information Security on data protection controls across the platform.
Serving Group Digital & Self-Service:
- Serve Group Digital's Data & AI teams with data and self-service capabilities, with clear interfaces and service commitments.
- Enable governed self-service for business and subsidiary teams, balancing autonomy with control.
- Provide centralized observability of data flows supporting digital products.
Operations & Reliability:
- Ensure availability, performance, and cost discipline of the data platform in production.
- Establish monitoring, incident management, and capacity planning for data services.
- Drive FinOps discipline on data platform and storage spend.
Leadership & Talent Development:
- Build and lead the Data Platforms team, including data platform and database management capabilities.
- Develop data engineering depth and support Emiratization objectives.
What This Role Is Not:
- Not an analytics or data science role; those capabilities are owned by Group Digital.
- Not a reporting or Business Intelligence delivery function; the role provides the platform others build on.
- Not limited to the company corporate; the platform serves the Group and its subsidiaries.
This role owns the data backbone on which the Group's analytics and Artificial Intelligence ambitions are built.
Related Year of Experience
- Minimum of 10-12+ years in data platform engineering or data architecture leadership within large, complex organizations.
Year of Experience in Managerial Position
- Minimum of 2+ years of managerial experience in a related field.
Field of Experience
- Enterprise data platforms at group or multi-entity scale, including cloud data stacks.
- Data engineering practices, data governance tooling, and self-service enablement.
- Building AI-ready data foundations (pipelines, MLOps-adjacent capabilities) is an advantage.
Technical and Interpersonal Skills
- Engineering leader with architectural depth; credible with both engineers and executive stakeholders.
- Service mindset toward Group Digital and the business: the platform exists to be consumed.
- Rigorous on data reliability, governance, and cost discipline.
- Comfortable operating at the boundary between technology platforms and digital product teams.
Qualification
- Bachelor's degree in a relevant field is required.
- Master's degree is preferable.
