Director of Applied AI R&D — Foundation Models & Multi-Agent Systems

Showcify; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 600,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

Education support

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Job summary

Inception42 is seeking a Director of R&D in Applied AI to lead concurrent flagship programs, including foundation language models and multi-agent systems, while overseeing client delivery tracks that productize research outputs.

You will set technical direction, be the arbiter on releases/IP/priorities, and guide a team of applied scientists toward scalable, responsible AI deployments.

Qualifications

• M.Sc. or Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or an AI-related field. Specialization in NLP, large language models, or applied ML is highly desirable.
• Minimum 10 years of experience in AI/ML with at least 4 years in a technical leadership or director-level role directing multiple concurrent research programs.
• Demonstrated ownership of at least one production foundation-model release end-to-end.
• Strong publication record in major NLP/ML venues, or an equivalent product-driven research and IP-filing track record.
• Production experience with Arabic or other lower-resource-language NLP at scale.
• Experience deploying AI Models into regulated or government contexts, including content moderation and policy-aligned guardrails.
• Hands-on familiarity with agentic-AI architectures — planning, tool use, multi-agent simulation.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.

Responsibilities

• Own the active R&D portfolio end-to-end — research roadmap, milestones, resource allocation and quarterly reviews.
• Direct the foundation language model program end-to-end — pre-training, post-training (instruction tuning, alignment), evaluation, and release.
• Provide oversight to high-stakes client and delivery tracks and run regular reviews with R&D team covering progress, blockers, and re-allocation decisions.
• Represent Inception R&D in CEO-, group-executive- and Board-level forums, with the ability to make impactful presentations.
• Own the most strategic external partnerships academic research partners, frontier-model labs, hyperscaler partnership cadence, safety teams, and vendors.
• Lead a team of applied scientists and senior applied scientists through mentorship, performance and growth, hiring, and shaping talent strategy.
• Set and enforce R&D quality standards across projects and teams.

Skills

Technical leadership

Foundation-model research

NLP/ML publications

Arabic NLP at scale

Regulated deployment

Agentic-AI architectures

Communication

Cross-program leadership

Education

M.S./Ph.D. in CS/AI

Job description

Inception42 is seeking a Director of R&D in Applied AI to lead concurrent flagship programs, including foundation language models and multi-agent systems, while overseeing client delivery tracks that productize research outputs.

You will set technical direction, be the arbiter on releases/IP/priorities, and guide a team of applied scientists toward scalable, responsible AI deployments.