Project Manager - Data & AI Delivery

About the role

A Project Manager is sought to lead Data and AI delivery for government and enterprise clients, from requirements through go-live and handover. The role suits an engineer who can read architecture diagrams, challenge designs and keep programmes on track while sitting across the table from clients.

Key responsibilities

• Own scope, schedule, budget, quality and client confidence for each Data and AI engagement.
• Plan and run projects end to end: discovery, data readiness, model development, integration, testing, deployment and handover.
• Maintain the plan, RAID log, dependency map and change control, and report progress, risks and decisions to the steering committee.
• Manage vendors, third-party suppliers and subcontractors against agreed scope, milestones and service levels.
• Turn business and legal requirements into a backlog covering data sources, pipelines, models, integrations and reporting.
• Work with architects and engineers on data quality, lineage, migration from legacy systems and model validation, monitoring and retraining.
• Set acceptance criteria for AI features, including accuracy thresholds, human review steps and fallback behaviour.
• Flag production risks of newer AI technologies and agree mitigations with the client before build.
• Act as day-to-day and executive point of contact for client sponsors, project directors and IT teams; run workshops, demos and steering meetings.
• Negotiate scope, priorities and timelines with government stakeholders and handle escalations early, keeping a written record of decisions and change requests.
• Make security a delivery gate: threat modelling, access control, encryption, secrets management and secure coding reviews in every release, with penetration tests and data protection requirements completed before go-live.
• Apply audit-ready documentation standards and lead a cross-functional team of engineers, analysts, testers and designers, coaching them on agile delivery and release discipline.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in engineering (computer, software, electronics, data or related); a master's is an advantage.
• 8+ years in IT delivery, including at least 4 years managing projects or programmes with Data, Analytics or AI components.
• Proven record of delivering systems in production for external clients, with direct ownership of budget, schedule and outcome.
• Strong client-facing ability, including steering committees, presentations to senior stakeholders and negotiation.
• Excellent written and spoken English; Arabic is a strong advantage.
• Willingness to travel to client sites in the GCC.
• Professional certification expected: PMP, PRINCE2 or equivalent.

Required skills

• Data platforms and AI delivery: data pipelines and ETL, data warehouses or lakehouses, BI and reporting, machine learning lifecycle, basics of generative AI.
• Working knowledge of Agile and Waterfall, and of formal change, risk and release management.
• Information security practices, including secure SDLC, access control, data protection and audit requirements.
• Preferred: experience with government, justice or public-sector clients, cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud) and tools such as Azure DevOps or Jira; exposure to Azure AI, Power BI, Databricks or Python-based ML stacks; certifications such as PMI-ACP, CISSP or CISM awareness; multilingual (Arabic and English) systems.

What we offer

• Lead role on large-scale digital transformation programmes for government clients in the GCC.
• Direct work with senior architects and executives.
• Competitive package, to be confirmed by HR, with professional certification and training support.