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.

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.

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.

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.