Business Development Manager — GCC

ParlexAI; Dubai; On-site; AED 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private medical cover for you and your

Real equity

Learning budget

Hybrid work from Cairo with flexible周

The hardware you ask for

Job summary

ParlexAI is building Arabic-first conversational AI for GCC payments and fintechs, with a Dubai entity and Cairo roots. The role focuses on identifying and pursuing opportunities with banks, PSPs, and telecoms across UAE, KSA, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Regular travel within the GCC is expected.

You will originate meetings, qualify opportunities, and lead initial pilots, while collaborating with the Country Manager and AE to close deals and expand the customer base.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in business development or sales in GCC payments or fintech, selling to banks and PSPs.
• Live network in Gulf financial institutions with named contacts.
• Depth in issuing/acquiring, card schemes, core-banking integration, and channels.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain the GCC target map across UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.
• Originate meetings with heads of digital, retail banking, cards, and transformation.
• Qualify buyers: budget owner, sponsor, procurement route, risk clearance for AI.
• Run commercial conversations and scope paid pilots with written success definitions.
• Support Country Manager and Account Executive to move opportunities into full cycle.
• Feed market feedback to product on dialect coverage and integrations.
• Keep CRM records and forecasts that reflect reality.

Skills

GCC payments sales

Arabic & English language skills

Strong bank/ PSP network

CRM & forecasting

Tools

CRM software

Deal structuring

Job description

Parlex builds Arabic-first conversational AI on top of payments infrastructure: Egyptian and Gulf dialect NLP, voice, and integrations into bank cores and card schemes. We were founded by payments people with eighteen years of selling into banks, PSPs and telecoms, and we have customers in Egypt and wider Africa. Head office is Cairo. The Dubai entity is new, and Visa's CEMEA headquarters being in Dubai is one of the reasons it exists.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain the GCC target map: which banks, PSPs, telecoms and fintechs across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain are worth pursuing, and in what sequence
• Originate meetings cold and warm with heads of digital, retail banking, cards, contact centre and transformation — not only innovation labs
• Qualify early and honestly: who owns the budget, who sponsors, what the procurement route is, and whether the risk function will clear AI in a customer-facing or decisioning path
• Run first commercial conversations and scope paid pilots with a written success definition both sides agree to
• Support the Country Manager and Account Executive on opportunities that move into full cycle, and stay useful in the account after handover
• Feed the market back to product: dialect coverage, core-banking integrations, deployment and data-residency expectations, and what competitors are actually winning with
• Keep CRM records and forecasts that survive contact with reality

Requirements

• 6+ years in business development or sales in GCC payments or fintech, selling to banks and PSPs
• A live network in Gulf financial institutions — named people who will take your call this quarter, not a connections list
• Enough payments depth to hold your own on issuing and acquiring, card schemes, core-banking integration and channel architecture
• Arabic and English, both strong enough for a board-level conversation and a written proposal
• Based in Dubai, with regular travel across the GCC and Riyadh in particular
• Nice to have: experience selling into SAMA-regulated institutions in Saudi Arabia, and a record of selling software or AI to banks rather than processing volume

Benefits

• Private medical cover for you and your family
• Real equity, explained in plain terms before you sign
• A learning budget, and the time to actually use it
• Hybrid working from our Cairo office, with flexibility around how you structure your week
• The hardware you ask for, not the hardware we have spare