Director of Operations & Planning, Cross-Team Strategy

MBZUAI (Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence); Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 350,000 - 550,000; Full time

Job summary

MBZUAI seeks a Head of Operations & Planning to lead day-to-day operational oversight of OFEA across multiple teams in Abu Dhabi. You will consolidate processes, budgets, and reporting, and translate strategic priorities into scalable, documented operations.

You will build templates, SOPs, workflows, and dashboards to support growth while coordinating with team leads to surface risks and dependencies.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in program/project management, ideally within higher education or similar multi-stakeholder environments.
• Strong process-documentation and systems-thinking skills, able to build from scratch
• Experience consolidating budget or resource visibility across multiple workstreams

Responsibilities

• Maintain a consolidated view of OFEA processes, events, deadlines, staffing demands and decisions.
• Run weekly/biweekly operations meetings with workstream leaders and provide concise progress summaries.
• Oversee daily operations across CTE, Nexus, and Postdoctoral Affairs to align with OFEA goals.
• Own project plans and timelines for major OFEA initiatives and track milestones.
• Build and maintain templates and SOPs to standardize team operations.
• Own OFEA's data and reporting infrastructure and consolidate program metrics.

Skills

Program management

Cross-team coordination

Process documentation

Data analytics

Dashboard development

Tools

Excel

Power BI

Job description

MBZUAI seeks a Head of Operations & Planning to lead day-to-day operational oversight of OFEA across multiple teams in Abu Dhabi. You will consolidate processes, budgets, and reporting, and translate strategic priorities into scalable, documented operations.

You will build templates, SOPs, workflows, and dashboards to support growth while coordinating with team leads to surface risks and dependencies.