Senior Manager – Data & AI

• Closing date: 04-Sep-2025

About the role:

Develop a comprehensive 5-year Data and Al strategy for MATAR. Oversee the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data to identify insights that inform business decisions and drive organizational growth for operational and executive management of MATAR. Lead cross-functional teams to drive development and implementation of Data & Al based solutions to drive business growth, improve customer experiences, and optimize operational efficiency. Define and manage the budgets and the IT work programme for requirements analysis, design specifications, development, procurement, implementation and maintenance for assigned systems.

Key responsibilities

• Define, propose and seek concurrence from senior MATAR stakeholders to establish an appropriate and cost-effective Data & Al strategy (over a 3–5-year timeframe) to support the MATAR business strategy and growth plans.
• Develop a 5 year road map and propose adequate 3 year rolling budgets by both business and IT to fulfil the agreed strategy.
• Ensure that the Business Intelligence/Data Analytics & Al platform complies with approved Data & Al strategy and governance model.
• Collaborate with senior stakeholders to drive innovation in Data & Al technologies to drive business growth, efficiency, improved customer experiences and data-driven decision making across the organization.
• Manage all outsourced / hosted IT services for assigned business areas, ensuring that service providers meet agreed service levels, the solutions are periodically benchmarked against competitive solutions in terms of functionality, technology, and cost, and future application strategy is aligned to strategic objectives of MATAR.
• Work cross functionally with IT Security and Data Protection teams to embed data governance processes and monitoring to ensure data quality, privacy, and security.
• Oversee the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data to identify insights that inform business decisions and drive organizational growth.
• Accountable for the implementation of data quality assurance processes that ensures data is accurate, complete, and reliable.
• Ensure that the organization's data architecture and infrastructure are scalable, flexible, and secure.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to support identification and the development of data & Al-based solutions and to integrate them into existing systems and processes.
• Plan and oversee the implementation of monitoring and reporting on the performance of data & Al solutions, making recommendations for improvement as necessary.
• Enable and support the business' management to develop and seek approval for business cases/CMC by providing reliable and optimal cost estimates and advising on technology and implementation risks.
• Accountable to establish a consolidated work program portfolio and plan ensuring key attributes such as business priority are maintained, based on inputs from solutions strategy, approved budgets, and high-level planning output from individual projects.
• Engage and influence Executive and Senior management to ensure portfolio delivery aligns with agreed business objectives.
• Own and ensure delivery of all agreed solutions, projects, and services in a timely and cost-effective manner.
• Ensure that a consolidated work program portfolio and plan is established and maintained along with key attributes such as business priority, based on inputs from solutions strategy, approved budgets, and high- level planning output from individual projects.
• Establish and facilitate optimal project governance and decision-making structures, such as Steering Committee and Working Groups, to ensure smooth, efficient, and risk-managed program delivery.
• Develop change management strategies and approaches to ensure transformational programs can be delivered effectively and business adoption is achieved.
• Ensure compliance with MATAR IT Service Management (ISO 20000 framework) and Information Security Management System (ISO 27001 framework) and support/achieve its applicable/assigned Key Performance Indicators (KPls).
• Enable smooth business operations by ensuring high availability of the systems through appropriate design and architecture; and comply with IT availability and business continuity management processes and standards.
• Accountable for management of assigned portfolio and reporting the status at regular intervals to ensure alignment with strategic objectives of MATAR
• Ensure issues related to projects/programs/change initiatives being managed are identified and necessary corrective actions are monitored until closure with minimum impact to business.
• Accountable for the collection and reporting on portfolio KPls often through the deployment of business management processes and systems.
• Accountable for management and execution of contracts for assigned portfolio of IT systems and hosted services.
• Lead the development of annual and rolling budgets related to Data & Al.
• Perform other department duties related to his/her position as directed by the Head of the Department.
• Ensure that all projects and project teams comply with IT project governance framework and standards from process, deliverables and reporting perspective.
• To build and lead a skilled and talented team for providing Data & Al capabilities to MATAR in line with corporate objectives and values.

About you:

• Bachelor's Degree or Equivalent with Minimum 10 years of job- related experience.
• Experience in data management, performing data analytics & developing Al applications in a fast-paced complex environment such as financial services, retail or aviation.
• Solid understanding of enterprise data analytics, data science & Al.
• Good understanding of Data Governance best practices.
• Strong track record in innovation using emerging technologies such as Digital Twin, loT, Computer Vison, Machine Learning and Al.
• Experience with deep learning frameworks such as Keras and Tensorflow.
• Good understanding of Software Development Life Cycle and Software Quality Assurance processes.
• Systems Implementation or Development leadership.
• Project management certification or demonstrable experience.
• Relationship Management.