Forsyth Barnes

Job Title: Lead AI & Data Engineer – Dubai Contract (Ref: 197591)

Location: Dubai, UAE

Contract: Initial contract engagement

Start: September 2026

Language: Arabic & English

We’re supporting a global consumer brand that is continuing to build out its data and AI capability in Dubai.

They are looking for a senior, hands-on AI & Data Engineer to work closely with their global media analytics team, with a particular focus on social media data, GenAI and automation. The core challenge is around improving the quality of social media analytics across platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. At the moment, large volumes of social mentions are being picked up through keywords and product terminology, but not all of that data is genuinely relevant to the brand. They need someone who can build the AI and data infrastructure to better understand context, classify that content and clean the data before it reaches downstream analytics.

What you'll be doing

• Building GenAI and Agentic AI solutions around real-world business and social media data
• Designing and developing data pipelines for large volumes of social content
• Building AI-led approaches to classify, filter and clean social media mentions
• Using NLP and contextual analysis to distinguish genuine brand engagement from irrelevant keyword matches
• Improving data quality, taxonomy and classification
• Identifying manual processes that can be automated through AI
• Taking AI ideas from concept through to working, production-ready solutions
• Helping shape the underlying AI and data infrastructure
• Working closely with Data Science, Analytics and senior global stakeholders

Requirements

• Strong experience across AI Engineering, Data Engineering or Machine Learning
• Hands-on experience building production AI solutions
• Strong GenAI / Agentic AI experience
• Advanced Python and SQL
• Experience building modern data pipelines and infrastructure
• Strong understanding of data cleansing, classification and unstructured data
• Experience with NLP or text-based machine learning
• Understanding of MLOps and production AI environments
• Comfortable working autonomously and building solutions from the ground up
• Strong stakeholder management skills
• Fluent Arabic and English
• Based in, or able to work from, Dubai

Relevant preferred experience

• Social media analytics
• Social listening
• TikTok / Instagram data
• Consumer or ecommerce businesses
• Large-scale text classification
• AI automation
• Building new AI capability within a growing organisation

This is a senior individual contributor role rather than a traditional people-management position.

The successful person will be expected to be technically hands-on, work with senior stakeholders and take ownership of building solutions rather than simply analysing the output of existing systems.