
Salla
AI/ML Engineering Manager
- Permanent
- Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- Experience 5 - 10 yrs
Job expiry date: 20/04/2026
Job overview
Date posted
06/03/2026
Location
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Salary
SAR 20,000 - 30,000 per month
Compensation
Comprehensive package
Experience
5 - 10 yrs
Seniority
Manager
Qualification
Bachelors degree
Expiration date
20/04/2026
Job description
The AI/ML Engineering Manager at Salla is responsible for leading a newly established AI product innovation team focused on delivering AI-powered products that maximize value for merchants. This role encompasses product discovery and strategy, execution and shipping, team building and leadership, and cross-functional collaboration. The manager identifies, scopes, and prioritizes AI product opportunities impacting merchant revenue, retention, or operational efficiency, develops rolling AI product roadmaps, defines success metrics, and decides to scale or terminate initiatives based on data. The role emphasizes shipping products rapidly on top of existing AI infrastructure, establishing rapid prototyping and validation cycles, and building a versatile team blending data science, engineering, and product thinking. The manager partners with AI, product, design, and business teams to translate AI capabilities into merchant outcomes while coordinating with ML platform and operations teams for infrastructure needs. The position requires hands-on technical expertise in LLM applications, recommendation systems, or ML-powered product features, experience in 0-to-1 product development, and proven ability to manage teams that shipped AI/ML-powered products used by real customers, with a focus on merchant outcomes, e-commerce, and marketplace contexts, optionally incorporating MENA market and Arabic-language AI experience.
Required skills
Key responsibilities
- Identify, scope, and prioritize AI product opportunities that impact merchant revenue, retention, or operational efficiency
- Develop a rolling roadmap of AI-powered experiences validated against merchant needs, market dynamics, and business impact
- Define success metrics for each AI initiative and make data-driven decisions to scale or terminate projects
- Ship AI products rapidly on top of existing AI infrastructure, creating products rather than rebuilding engines
- Establish a rapid prototyping and validation cadence from concept to prototype to merchant pilot to scale or kill
- Build and develop a versatile team blending data science, engineering, and product thinking
- Operate as a peer to other technical leads across the AI department while fostering a collaborative team culture
- Create a team culture of experimentation, merchant obsession, and fast iteration
- Partner across the AI department to leverage generative AI capabilities, recommendation signals, and platform infrastructure
- Collaborate with product, design, and business stakeholders to ensure AI experiences translate into merchant outcomes
- Coordinate with ML platform and operations teams for infrastructure needs without duplicating systems
Experience & skills
- Possess 5+ years in engineering or ML roles with at least 2 years managing a team that shipped AI/ML-powered products used by real customers
- Demonstrate a track record of 0-to-1 product development from concept to production with measurable impact
- Exhibit strong product instincts, identifying what to build in terms of merchant outcomes
- Maintain hands-on technical depth in LLM applications, recommendation systems, or ML-powered product features
- Comfortable with ambiguity and defining roadmaps independently
- Experience working in or building for e-commerce, marketplace, or merchant-facing platforms
- Preferably have experience with MENA markets, Arabic-language AI products, or regional commerce patterns including seasonal dynamics, WhatsApp commerce, and social selling
- Background in high-growth technology companies operating with startup speed and scale
- Familiarity with multi-agent architectures or AI agent platforms
- Arabic language proficiency (business-level or native) is a strong preference