Director - Digital Center of Excellence

The Job Purpose of Director Digital Center of Excellence is responsible of taking “first among peers”, leading role from the product owners by taking a leading responsibility in stakeholder management, helping coordinate across squads and driving projects/programs with multiple products/complexities.

Core Responsibilities:

• Develop innovative and market-leading products in liaison with the Chief Digital and Information Officer and Product Owners.
• Establish the overall vision and roadmap for products across the different squads in the portfolio.
• Manage and facilitate product adoption and lifecycle from concept to launch.
• Define Digital Cluster product specification, features and deliverables based on market demand and oversee product testing and quality control to validate results.
• Review and set priorities across products to meet customer’s release expectations.
• Act as the single point of contact for demand management for the squads.
• Provide guidance to liaise with other teams in bringing new and innovative ideas for products in Digital Cluster to life.
• Enforce Product Owners in the portfolio to align on roadmaps, priorities and dependencies – operationally calling for and facilitating the discussions.
• Lead market research and competitor analysis to understand customer preferences, best practices and market trends.
• Build strong relationship with external vendors, direct resolving issues and manage backlogged products aiming to retain high customer engagement.
• Build a comprehensive Data Analytics warehouse for the Cluster in alignment with Corporate Guidelines and Cluster Market Needs and Demands.

People Management Responsibilities:

• Conduct regular 1:1s with product owners and squad members.
• Participate in discussions inside and across the squads’ on behalf of the portfolio.
• Be a sparring partner for individual product owners to solve operational questions.
• Drive initiatives to instill a spirit of engaged urgency across squads and ensure that the team efforts are aligned towards the portfolio KPIs.
• Build and manage innovative products strategy and long-term plans.

Strategic Responsibilities:

• Take a leading role in discussions about squad visions, scopes, KPIs, and resources to ensure that the cluster is working towards the same goals by minimizing redundancy, and to ensure the team members goals, objectives & KPIs meet the management expectations.
• Lead cross-functional team to streamline processes and implement best practices to drive operational excellence.
• Assess risks in product development and develop risk mitigation strategies to minimize potential liabilities.
• Provide regular reports to senior management on the cluster product development performance, including financial, operational, and market-related data.
• Control the budget of new products and recommend alternatives to meet expectation.

Educational and Technical Qualifications:|

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Marketing, Engineering or related field; Master's degree is a plus.

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Language Skills:|

• Excellent English. Arabic is an added advantage

Years of Experience:|

• A minimum of 15 years of experience in a similar role

Nature of Experience:|

• Experience as business manager in relevant product / customer or enabler segment.
• Deep knowledge of relevant domains and products
• Solid knowledge of industry trends pain points
• Experience in agile development, with specific product owner (or similar) experience preferred, should be confident in building and managing the backlog of work.
• Experience working with engineering teams preferred, cross functional teams a plus.
• Ability to manage complex products.
• Ability to manage parallel product development.
• Enhanced business acumen since Challenger mindset and passion to challenge status quo to find new solutions and drive out of the box ideas – loves and embraces change.