Aldar
Vice President, Data Platforms
- Permanent
- Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- Experience 10 - 15 yrs
Job expiry date: 13/11/2026
Job overview
Date posted
29/09/2026
Location
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Salary
Undisclosed
Compensation
Comprehensive package + relocation
Experience
10 - 15 yrs
Seniority
VP/Executive
Qualification
Bachelors degree
Expiration date
13/11/2026
Job description
Analytics and data science stay with Group Digital, which leaves this position with the platform everything else is built on. Aldar's data backbone covers ingestion, storage, modeling, processing and serving layers across the Group and its subsidiaries, and you own it from engineering through to operations. Architecture decisions should favour reuse, scalability, security-by-design and cost efficiency. AI-ready foundations are a priority, including pipelines, data products and platform capabilities for advanced analytics and Artificial Intelligence use cases. Platform-level governance brings in cataloguing, lineage, quality monitoring and access controls, with Information Security as a partner on data protection. Business and subsidiary teams should be able to use governed self-service without the platform becoming a bottleneck. Production reliability means monitoring, incident management, capacity planning and FinOps discipline on platform and storage spend. The Data Platforms team, including database management, is yours to build and lead, with Emiratization objectives in mind. Candidates typically bring 10 to 12+ years in data platform engineering or data architecture leadership, at least 2 of them in management, plus experience with cloud data stacks at group or multi-entity scale.
Required skills
Key responsibilities
- Define and evolve the Group data platform architecture across ingestion, storage, modeling, processing and serving layers
- Design for reuse, scalability, security-by-design and cost efficiency across the Group and subsidiaries
- Build AI-ready foundations, including pipelines, data products and platform capabilities for advanced analytics and Artificial Intelligence
- Own data ingestion from enterprise and subsidiary source systems through reliable, monitored pipelines
- Set engineering standards for data pipelines, data products and platform automation
- Ensure database management and storage planning support performance and growth
- Implement platform-level data governance covering data principles, cataloguing, lineage, quality monitoring and access controls
- Safeguard master data alignment and data reliability for downstream consumers
- Partner with Information Security on data protection controls
- Serve Group Digital's Data & AI teams with data and self-service capabilities under clear service commitments
- Enable governed self-service for business and subsidiary teams
- Provide centralised observability of data flows supporting digital products
- Maintain availability, performance and cost discipline of the data platform in production
- Establish monitoring, incident management and capacity planning for data services
- Drive FinOps discipline on data platform and storage spend
- Lead the Data Platforms team, including data platform and database management capabilities
- Develop data engineering depth and support Emiratization objectives
Experience & skills
- Bring a minimum of 10 to 12+ years in data platform engineering or data architecture leadership within large, complex organisations
- Demonstrate at least 2 years of managerial experience in a related field
- Hold a Bachelor's degree in a relevant field, with a Master's degree preferable
- Show experience with enterprise data platforms at group or multi-entity scale, including cloud data stacks
- Apply strong data engineering practices, data governance tooling and self-service enablement
- Offer experience building AI-ready data foundations and MLOps-adjacent capabilities (advantage)
- Engage credibly with both engineers and executive stakeholders
- Work comfortably at the boundary between technology platforms and digital product teams
- Uphold rigour on data reliability, governance and cost discipline