Executive Assistant

Overview

The Position

Ownership of Information Flow (Inbox)

• Take direct ownership of the CEO’s inbox. Triage, categorize, and filter so the CEO sees only the correspondence that genuinely requires his attention.
• Draft and release responses in the CEO’s voice for review, and handle routine correspondence independently within agreed guidelines.
• Flag any incoming email that contains a commitment, commercial implication, scope change, or risk before any response is released.
• Route low-value messages to the appropriate team member or dispose of them — protect the CEO’s attention as a scarce resource.

Calendar and Scheduling Ownership

• Own the CEO’s calendar end-to-end: book, reschedule, protect focus blocks, resolve conflicts, and prepare meetings in advance.
• Produce concise meeting briefs with relevant background, prior correspondence, required documents, and suggested outcomes.
• Coordinate confidently across Gulf Standard Time (UTC+4), North America, and active project geographies including Iraq, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
• When scheduling requests conflict or commitments compete for the same time, escalate with options and a recommended path — do not wait for instruction.

Task and Project Follow-Through

• Maintain a shared register of outstanding actions, commitments, and deliverables for the CEO. Chase internal and external parties until items close.
• Coordinate with Drakken’s functional leads across projects, automation, proposals, accounting, and administration to keep work moving.
• Produce a concise weekly status summary for the CEO covering closed items, open items, blocked items, and items requiring decision.

Confidentiality and Information Handling

• Apply strict discretion at all times. Treat customer names, financial figures, commercial terms, staff matters, and strategic plans as confidential by default.
• Adhere to Drakken’s document control conventions in Ottofiles (the company document management system). Any AI-assisted output is a draft only until it has been uploaded, versioned, checked, and approved in Ottofiles by the appropriate authority.
• Apply the classification markers already in use (for example, (U) Unclassified) on controlled documents.

Personal Support (Light)

• Manage light personal matters for the CEO: appointments, reservations, personal travel coordination, errands, vehicle servicing, and gift-buying.
• Maintain clear boundaries between business and personal scope. The role does not include household staff management or broader family-affairs administration.

Errands and In-Person Support

• Handle in-person errands in and around Dubai — document collection and delivery, courier drops, bank runs, vendor visits, and office support as required.
• Coordinate logistics for visiting members of the Drakken leadership team when they are in Dubai.

AI Tools and Systems Leverage

• Use AI tools (including Claude and ChatGPT) to compound your output — for drafting, summarizing, research, email triage, and meeting preparation. You should be curious about AI tools and comfortable building workflows with them alongside the CEO.
• Work comfortably within Drakken’s technology stack: Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams), Ottofiles, Avaza.
• Build and maintain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), templates, and checklists for recurring work so the contribution of the role compounds and scales over time.
• Decision-Making and Autonomy
• In the CEO’s absence, make informed decisions within agreed authority limits to ensure continuity of operations.
• Operate with a bias for forward motion: when an item is stuck pending CEO attention, propose the next step and execute on approval.
• Represent Drakken with external parties — clients, vendors, and visitors — with the same professionalism expected of the Office of the CEO.

Success

Inbox Management

• The CEO sees only 10–20% of inbound email — the portion that genuinely requires executive attention. The remainder is triaged, routed, responded to, or archived by the EA.
• High-priority emails acknowledged within 1–2 hours; full responses released the same business day. Non-urgent communications responded to within 24 hours.
• Zero commercially significant items, commitments, or risks passed through without being flagged for the CEO’s awareness.

Calendar Management

• Long-term target of zero scheduling conflicts, with an initial tolerance of no more than one to two minor conflicts per month.
• 100% of scheduled meetings confirmed in advance and supported with an agenda and any required documents.

Task and Deliverable Follow-Through

• 95% on-time closure of tracked actions and deliverables. All outstanding items have a named owner, due date, and next action.
• Weekly status summary delivered to the CEO by end of business each Friday.

Confidentiality and Document Control

• Zero breach of confidential information.
• 100% compliance with Ottofiles versioning, naming, and classification conventions for controlled documents.

Living Job Description Model

Key Requirements

• 5–8 years of experience in executive support, ideally at the C-suite level
• Proven experience managing an executive inbox and calendar independently
• Exceptional organizational and prioritization skills
• Strong written and verbal communication skills (fluent English required)
• High level of discretion and professionalism
• Proficiency with Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams)
• Comfortable working across multiple time zones and international teams
• Experience or strong interest in using AI tools to enhance productivity
• Ability to operate in a fast-paced, high-responsibility environment

Preferred

• Experience in engineering, energy, or project-based organizations
• Additional languages are a plus