Head of Technology - Buying, Planning, Sourcing

Salt; Dubai; On-site; AED 700,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Salt in Dubai is seeking a hands-on technology leader to build and scale a new in-house Buying, Planning & Sourcing platform for a major consumer and retail group.

This greenfield product‑engineering leadership role will shape the engineering function, build a high‑performing team, and deliver a platform with real organisation‑wide impact across product, design, data and operations.

Qualifications

• Significant experience leading software or product engineering teams as a Head of Engineering, Engineering Director, VP Engineering or equivalent.
• Strong product‑engineering background within a fast-moving digital business, marketplace, e‑commerce, fintech, travel‑tech or consumer technology environment.
• Proven experience building a platform from scratch, or leading a major modernisation of a legacy platform.
• Comfortable working in ambiguity and taking ownership of a greenfield technology mandate.
• Technically credible and still hands‑on: able to challenge architecture, review code and guide engineering teams directly.
• Experience building scalable cloud‑native products using modern engineering practices such as microservices, APIs, event‑driven architecture, Kubernetes, CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code.
• Strong stakeholder management, with the ability to partner closely with product leaders while leading engineering delivery.

Responsibilities

• Define the engineering vision, architecture and delivery roadmap for a new Buying, Planning & Sourcing platform.
• Turn manual and legacy business processes into scalable, intuitive internal digital products.
• Lead hands-on technical decision-making across architecture, code quality, engineering standards and platform reliability.
• Partner with Product, Design, Data and business stakeholders to translate priorities into deliverable product outcomes.
• Build and scale a dedicated engineering organisation, initially leveraging existing capability.
• Drive modern engineering practices across cloud-native development, APIs, microservices, event-driven architecture, Kubernetes, DevOps and CI/CD.
• Ensure the platform integrates effectively with Oracle ERP and wider inventory, e-commerce, data and operational systems.
• Establish delivery governance, technical KPIs, security‑by‑design, observability and operational resilience.
• Identify practical opportunities for AI, automation, forecasting and data-driven decision‑making.

Skills

Head of Engineering

Software engineering leadership

Product-Engineering background

Cloud-native platforms

Microservices

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Architecture review

Stakeholder management

Tools

Oracle ERP integration

APIs

Job description

Head of Technology – Buying, Planning & Sourcing

Location: Dubai, UAE

We are hiring a hands-on technology leader to build and scale a new in-house Buying, Planning & Sourcing platform for a major consumer and retail group.

This is a greenfield product-engineering leadership role

This is an opportunity to shape a business-critical platform from the ground up, establish the engineering function and build a high-performing team over time.

This is a role for...

A product-engineering leader who enjoys building rather than inheriting. You will be comfortable taking manual business area and turning it into a modern, scalable internal platform from the ground up.

You may come from e-commerce, marketplaces, fintech, travel-tech or another high-growth product organisation but you will have experience working closely with Product teams to solve complex commercial and operational problems through technology.

This is not a traditional IT applications or management role. It suits someone who is technically hands-on, commercially minded and excited by the opportunity to set the engineering direction, build a team and create a platform with real organisation-wide impact.

What you'll do

• Define the engineering vision, architecture and delivery roadmap for a new Buying, Planning & Sourcing platform.
• Turn manual and legacy business processes into scalable, intuitive internal digital products.
• Lead hands-on technical decision-making across architecture, code quality, engineering standards and platform reliability.
• Partner with Product, Design, Data and business stakeholders to translate priorities into deliverable product outcomes.
• Build and scale a dedicated engineering organisation, initially leveraging existing capability
• Drive modern engineering practices across cloud-native development, APIs, microservices, event-driven architecture, Kubernetes, DevOps and CI/CD.
• Ensure the platform integrates effectively with Oracle ERP and wider inventory, e-commerce, data and operational systems.
• Establish delivery governance, technical KPIs, security‑by‑design, observability and operational resilience.
• Identify practical opportunities for AI, automation, forecasting and data-driven decision‑making.

What we’re looking for

• Significant experience leading software or product engineering teams as a Head of Engineering, Engineering Director, VP Engineering or equivalent.
• A strong product‑engineering background within a fast-moving digital business, marketplace, e‑commerce, fintech, travel‑tech or consumer technology environment.
• Proven experience building a platform from scratch, or leading a major modernisation of a legacy platform.
• Comfortable working in ambiguity and taking ownership of a greenfield technology mandate.
• Technically credible and still hands‑on: able to challenge architecture, review code and guide engineering teams directly.
• Experience building scalable cloud‑native products using modern engineering practices such as microservices, APIs, event‑driven architecture, Kubernetes, CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code.
• Strong stakeholder management, with the ability to partner closely with product leaders while leading engineering delivery.